My Uk Community Site

For the UK project, I have chosen to study the Common's Market, the dining area on south campus between Blanding and Kirwain Towers. This area is full of life during the evenings, as many students come to eat food and converse with one another. From my current observations, I have noticed the area is set up in a few regions. One enters the main entry, descends the stairs, and pays to enter the food district. This is another interesting aspect of the location, no entry is permitted without pay. After this barrier is crossed, there are a variety of centrally located buffets with various food changing each day. Apart from this food section is the seating, subdivided by walls or implied walls into 6 seating areas. The largest is aligned with the food region, the others splitting off of this by walls next to it. It seems that large groups and small groups of people congregate in the main area, whereas individuals will move along to the corners of the building outside of the main seating area. I speculate that this is to isolate themselves in a way and not draw attention to their loneness. People who are in groups constantly converse to keep themselves occupied, whereas loners will do other things. They will look at their phone, listen to music, or watch tv. The Commons Market as a whole seems to have a civil neutrality-- in the food area people exercise civil actions to wait there turn and allow other people to get what they want, even strangers. There is not an intimidating atmosphere with pushing or shoving. Outside of this neutral zone, people subdivide into small groups, more intimate zones and sit at different tables in different regions. These people are then effectively split off from the rest of the community in an intimate setting, until they move back into the neutral area again. These are the observations I've thus far regarding social interactions, hopefully many more interesting ones are yet to come.