Building Boundaries: City Life with Walls in the Heartland

Building Boundaries: City Life With Walls in the Heartland

Many sounds are so very normal for Americans to hear today. The buzzing of fast cars down an expressway. The sound of cars hitting and crashing into each other as these fast cars lose control and wreck on the expressway. Another common sound is of an airplane engine overhead while out in the yard mowing grass. So many sounds are taken for granted within everyday communities around America. It is with the addition of sound barriers that have been added that makes these everyday sounds not seem so normal for these walled communities. The life within these walls is quieter and more protected. The sound of a car crashing is not as common. The sound of the fast cars on an expressway is not as common. It is the protection that is offered to these parts of a city that remind people who have studied about the Heartland region of the world, what a wall is all about. A wall around a city is an intrinsical part of the city as a whole. It has many roles in the life of the city.

One of the roles that a wall offers to the city is protection. It is for both the protection of the people inside as well as the people outside. For the people inside, the wall is a way for them to avoid living in the agricultural villages that people set up around the city. The people within the city were often used to help keep the city running, whether is from legal issues or commerce. It was the villagers whom “supplied produce for the cities markets and men for the kings’ armies and labor battalions.” (Matthews 102) Though there were walls around certain people many times the surrounding villages also were used for or able to be protected as well. This is similar to the suburbs that sit outside the city. Even though the people do not live within the city, they are used in the city for work and protection. It is not uncommon to see police officer cars in a city other than the one they work in and to see commuters...