Three areas of work:
East Palo Alto, CA (EPA)
St. Ann's Bay, JA (SAB)
Santa Fe County, NM (SFC)
a) All three have in common opposition and alternatives to mainstream development programs that are extremely destructive for the environment, for heritage preservation, and for social justice.
b) All three might benefit from a simple development formula: change nothing fundamental--buildings, setbacks, trees, etc.--that can be seen from the street (where tourists in particular could view it), and locate all new structures in the backs or otherwise away from street view.
c) Where wood can't be readily salvaged, or is deemed a fire hazard, replace wood with treated cardboard or formed paper mache'. (See note)
d) Where woodwork is feasible, cultivate local carpenters and crafts people to do the work (See note)
e) Murals can be made of now-defaced historic buildings like the attached. It might also be feasible to impose written messages (as, possibly, on the printery facade where Marcus Garvey apprenticed in SAB) that somehow graphically mirror the now-lost architectural features.
RACISM OF LAND
I think we have it wrong to see racism so exclusively in terms of skin pigment. There is something that is like racism that is probably more important than skin tone. I'll call it "racism" of place. East Palo Alto (EPA) has always been the victim of this racism of place. The white people who were part of the Weeks Poultry Colony 100 years ago were treated like riffraff by Palo Alto. America and the world were turning their backs on agriculture and the nurture of land, and only the industrial and business worlds would thenceforth get respect. That helps explain the original 20's highway through EPA, later to be widened into the present freeway... And Whisky Gulch, the limit point of Stanfords' alcohol restricted zone. Put the drunks over there in the riffraff place. This was all pre-minority days.
This EPA pattern can be seen reproduced in various ways wherever you go. It is the prevailing system driving gross inequality, gentrification, land grabs and other forms of land-related exploitation. The myopic, zero-sum approach for immediate advantage--or perceived advantage--means there can be no rational land use planning on any scale.
Another aspect of the racism of land are undeclared ideological preferences based on aesthetics. A community wants housing. OK, what does demolition of exsisting structures , changing setbacks or cutting down trees have to do with that? Do you want housing, or do you want to wipe out what's there already? If you merely want housing, why not simply add it, inconspicuously, out of sight? No, you don't want to do that because you are confusing the appearance of a place, and what that appearance signifies, with the straightforward issue of housing. So if you don't like the appearance of a place, please address that as a separate issue. Explain what is wrong with the place. Often the supposed solutions to housing requires eliminating what's already there so as to pave over more land, build bigger-than-needed houses, widen roads so cars can go faster, and even for some other mysterious "improvements" that defy comprehension. One must conclude that they symbolize a purely religious belief in the superiority of paving over trees and topsoil.
HOUSING
I doubt that there is much difference in development paradigms anywhere anywhere you go within the hyper networked global environment we have today. What I see as housing solutions apply to every place I've ever lived in the US or abroad. The following applies everywhere.
Ensure that everybody has shelter, and that the shelter is not disruptive or unsightly. Since, in general, the rich can fend for themselves, my emphasis would be on shelter for the poor. And since we have an exploding population to share a finite pie, more and more people are among the poor...even well educated college students. So, yes, innovative and imaginative approaches to housing for all are needed all around the world.
BUSINESS
St, Ann's Bay, the capital of the parish of St. Ann in Jamaica, doesn't have a chamber of commerce. OK. A chamber of commerce might require lots of formal structure that a now pauperized, marginalized town can't afford to tackle. But surely it can make a simple list of its businesses! And some of those businesses might even be able to use the English language to make a coherent and readable statement about the business, mightn't they? Or add a photograph of the place perhaps? Where I live in Santa Fe County in NM there is some sort of list, whatever simple programs for communication that may still be lacking. (I would be greatly challenged to find that list online.) My town and its business district lies on a federally designated scenic trail, and the lack of coherent thinking about the preservation of the trail's scenic character in the face of astoundingly inconsistent development affecting it defies imagination.
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