THE BOOK

Lynn,

There's another Jamaican, this time in Perth!, who is trying to help think this project through (to see whether or how she can fit in). Her name is Jo Lindo. (She has a business background.)  So these business dreams will be shared with her.

T

http://www.urbanecology.org/downloads/WeeksNeighborhoodPlan.pdf

The Weeks Neighborhood Plan is work I spearheaded in East Palo Alto, CA, as Founding Director of East Palo Alto Historical and Agricultural Society (EPA-HAS). The Faustian bargain was to try and make it respectable and planner-friendly. But that didn't work. It isn't people friendly. And after 22 years, it sits on a shelf gathering dust. I defy anyone to enjoy the experience of reading it.

But community planning, apparently, is my strength, and I'd like to try at it again, through the artist's lens (since my academic and turbulent professional background  is centered on art). Toward this end, I'm working on a book that is still wide open as to what final form it should have. Everything i do is experimental, toward a different kind of social and business order. 

THE BOOK

- I'm considering a book publishing project that simultaneously serves as a catalyst for a land development/community planning business.

- The project, in all its combined aspects, must feel effortless.

- An unlimited number of people may "invest" in the project (and I was clearer about this earlier today than now). Whatever part of the project they "buy" or use will yield a tiny percentage back to the business core.

- An unlimited range and volume of practitioners can come and go internationally, get paid, yielding the core some income. The success of the business depends on low profit and high volume.

- Basic planning and design comes from the core.

- The book is updated every year.

- it's free online, but it's visual quality will be such that the paper version is sought after.

- High quality photo-images are included in plastic sleeves (from hemp) inside the book so they can be framed and installed on walls. They are cheaper this way than ordered online.

- Since the business model "feels" like a Silicon Valley startup, it might well grow a tech component that makes all the parts work.

- The business must force competition to conform to high standards of public good....or get out of the business.

- The business should involve as many aspects of a Garveyite nation building program as possible. (It should be fostering a vision, and a means toward, that world).

NOTE: Garveyite: Marcus Garvey is Jamaica's first national hero, and led the largest mass movement of black people in history (c. 1920) My grandfather was his godfather, apprentice master in printing (and the printing office remains in St, Ann's Bay, Jamaica, where Garvey and I were born), and lifelong friend and mentor.

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