THE POOR AND THE ELITE

My theory is that my drawing points in the direction of how you avoid it. You leave what is there (the junk mail graphics) intact, and build around it. I did a whole complicated drawing over a complicated piece of graphics without any deletion whatsoever. That is the point of what I'm saying and writing. People think the issue is social (mean gentrifiers who dislike black people) when the larger issue is stupid and unsophisticated people following Maslow's law of bloody hierarchy. They want hard, boxy, sterile new things just like the style customary for the class immediately above theirs. For some reason they can't value the aristocratic quality--top tier, high class--of the place they have, So they want to tear it down, thinking new stuff will help them get a leg up. But it doesn't work that way. It is the aristocratic old, in-place landscape that can help the poor. You have the poor, and you have the elite. And everything in between is the killer. 


why all aspects of planning and development are the problem

THE INTERACTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL WITH THE COMMONS

I never thought about it quite this way before. But the colonial system of architecture made for a great deal more order and system than currently prevails. In downtown Kingston, curb setbacks were all the same, block to block. Building heights, courses, window levels were relatively uniform. The normal color for everything was white. But then, what happened inside each building either was or could be extremely varied. You might say that the interiors were the realm of the "individual," while the outside belonged to the commons. So everybody in the commons shared certain basic values. In our time, artists have been overly programmed to stand out, be different, be original, But what about putting these prerogatives on the insides? Insides could be more than literally inside a building perhaps. Maybe it could also mean that you make the art respectful and subservient to the uniformity of the commons. For one thing, you don't just splash brightly colored paint about without even a thought of how it affects the architectural commons it's a part of.

And if you gentrify the appearance of the place, thinking it looks too poor and backward, you will gentrify other aspects of the place as well. It's a subtle issue. You cannot possibly avoid gentrification if you tear down (rather than repair) old buildings to put up new ones. For what it's worth, I include my old master drawing to show how you can install something new without removing what was there before. Some may choose to get stuck with the fact that the image is European and not something noticeably black. Like how the Weeks Neighborhood was the legacy of white racist people, so why preserve it? That attitude helped stave off gentrification...right? That was not the determinative issue. What matters is whether you tear down the old instead of finding a harmonious and sophisticated way to add to it. Demolition = Gentrification. Fact.

Manage