Dear Mr. Wilmot,
Mr. Joseph Dunne has recommended that I contact you regarding a vision of land use. planning, preservation and tourism that is more evolved, and more appropriate for our times, than the tourism paradigms holding sway in Jamaica and beyond. My emphasis is on the "cultural landscape" with its twin tributaries of the natural and the historic (built) landscape.
Acknowledging the unprecedented interconnection of the global economic system and its dependence on dwindling cheap fossil fuel energy, I emphasize low tech, reuse, and a conservationist approach to development.
No Demolition:
Building materials of the past are comprised of a great deal of natural and human energy that might be referred to as "embodied energy." As fossil fuels get harder to find and cost more to produce, we can assume that it is finite and will be much less available in the future than now. Since money is a token of future energy supply, we can't expect to have money to find affordable alternatives to run industrial society for a growing population and generally depleted natural and other vital resources. Given the energy/economic dynamics of our time, we can't afford to knock down buildings and dump their material into landfills. We need to take a different path.
Radical Acceptance
We can no longer afford to indulge the myth of progress. While we might discuss the notions of progress, we can clearly see there is no linear progress in human affairs. The built environment should reflect that. Even structures deemed tasteless or "wrong" can have an educational benefit for tourism. T^hey demonstrate the struggles and inconsistencies of our global system, and Jamaican tourism can act as the laboratory for the world for ways to address global environmental and economic crises, even as we adapt bad buildings gently in the direction of harmony with their varied contexts.
THE PARADOX OF NON CHANGE
The paradox of changing everything while leaving everything exactly the same.
Leaving everything exactly the same isn't strictly possible, and paradoxically, it can generate a great deal of work. Any building you leave unattended quickly deteriorates. If you work to repair small deteriorations on a regular, or even daily, basis, a building will last as long as it is treated that way. The religion of progress says buildings can only last 40 years, and then they are worthless and have to be torn down. That is as much religious hocus pocus as telling us that God is an old bearded man up in the sky. It is simply a belief that cannot stand up to scientific investigation.
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DOING WITH LESS
Seeing doing with less as deferring gratification doesn’t seem to explain everything. In the visual arts, very broadly speaking, less is generally more. I think it was said first by Mies van der Rohe: Less is more.
More can simply be junk that reduces effectiveness, and less can weed out the unnecessary and increase effectiveness. So doing with less can produce better, more economical form, while being pleasant and compelling to deal with. (If beauty and elegance didn’t serve some human purpose, there wouldn’t be so much of it in history.) While beauty can often require more, it seems that elegance, by definition, requires less.
WATTLE AND DAUB
aNN hODGES, ARCHITECT FOR gOLDEN eYE hOTEL AND rESORTS is enthusiastic about this direction
Jamaican custom that can be widely understood
Might have enough support already and be markatable as a truly native technology to educate the tourist.
JAMAICA AND NEW ARCHITECTURE
Trevor Burrowes The problem with celebrating the new is coming up with a sensible notion for what IS new. Building (supposedly) in the international style is not new. It is in every ambitious country in the world. It was one thing when Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created the international style in architecture. I was taught in a program created by Josef Albers, a colleague of "Mies" at the Bauhaus who also emigrated to the US. These masters were indeed original, highly educated, idealistic, visionary, thinking for the first time about an architecture for the industrial age that they hoped would bring in a better way of life for humankind.
It didn't do that, unfortunately, and instead degenerated into a banal formula that every builder can generate. It was very common in communist countries, but just about everywhere else too. It is by now nothing new or creative. It has become ANTI creative, forestalling new thinking. Now, people are waking up to the fact that the ubiquitous concrete box is not what they want, is a mistaken direction, and must be replaced by a renewed examination of past heritage. Paradoxically, to look to the past IS new. It is not what we've been doing since the war, and the influx of super abundant cheap oil to make those bad designs work, to power the air conditioners, to manufacture the cement, is now coming to a close. These buildings show no sign that they understand that. They are behind the times, clinging to a reality that is slipping away.
All the choices for the parliament building show the same sickly lack of new thinking. All are formulaic and banal. All say nothing distinctive or aspirational about Jamaica, or about the new direction it must take.. None of this is new.
Trevor Burrowes The problem with celebrating the new is coming up with a sensible notion for what IS new. Building (supposedly) in the international style is not new. It is in every ambitious country in the world. It was one thing when Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created the international style in architecture. I was taught in a program created by Josef Albers, a colleague of "Mies" at the Bauhaus who also emigrated to the US. These masters were indeed original, highly educated, idealistic, visionary, thinking for the first time about an architecture for the industrial age that they hoped would bring in a better way of life for humankind.
It didn't do that, unfortunately, and instead degenerated into a banal formula that every builder can generate. It was very common in communist countries, but just about everywhere else too. It is by now nothing new or creative. It has become ANTI creative, forestalling new thinking. Now, people are waking up to the fact that the ubiquitous concrete box is not what they want, is a mistaken direction, and must be replaced by a renewed examination of past heritage. Paradoxically, to look to the past IS new. It is not what we've been doing since the war, and the influx of super abundant cheap oil to make those bad designs work, to power the air conditioners, to manufacture the cement, is now coming to a close. These buildings show no sign that they understand that. They are behind the times, clinging to a reality that is slipping away.
All the choices for the parliament building show the same sickly lack of new thinking. All are formulaic and banal. All say nothing distinctive or aspirational about Jamaica, or about the new direction it must take.. None of this is new.
The Weeks Neighborhood in the minority-majority city of East Palo Alto, next door to Facebook's world headquarters in Menlo Park
The Turquoise Trail that I live on (get proper terminology) falling under the juriusdiction of the County of Santa Fe (surrounded the world famous city of Santa Fe).
The entire island of Jamaica
Concern with the public sphere...circulation corridors of various intensities and scale which can act like the the circulation systems of the body, nourished by the blood of tourism. It is a case of working from the visual (my background) to the social and political.
Various interpretations of preservation from stabilization to full scale restoration
Use of students at various levels
work with established layers of government as a connective overlay attempting to harmonize and rationalize routine governmental processes
VISUAL DETERMINISM--IN THAT WHAT EXISTS IS FULL OF INFORMATION OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIS IMPORT
Since the mistakes are an aspect of tourism but aalso are symptoms of problems, they need to be framed or contained, while better development goes on behind the scenes, and which will also cater to aspirational and educational tourism
In a time of environmental calamity, energy must be conserved to tyhe utmost, which means leaving what is there intact, mining it for tourism
the natural landscape must be also scrupulouslyu preserved.
the importance of photography
MY bio
greenways'bhutran
namibia protected coast
education away from kingston
doing more with less
The use of Facebook: KC, VJ, JCHS
centered on creativity
more writing to come
Pete Hubbard Collaboration
Town and Country
graphics
Restoring St5. Ann's Bay
Infestation of academism. non populist, technocratic
Bhutan
COULD THIS BE THE STARTING PLACE FOR DISCUSSING JAMAICA'S EXISTENTIAL PROBLEMS?
(toward a methodology for addressing the multiplicity of problems--the emphasis here is the Cockpit Country and St. Ann, Jamaica--instead of a disunified and fragments approach more akin to vain attempts to extinguish fires in the absence of a plan to prevent them)
Apart from the two-party split, Jamaica has another critical divide: those who are Africa oriented, and those who are not. An African orientation is a radical shift from: a) a British Colonial orientation, where our fate is ultimately tied up with Britain as our ultimate destiny; b) an independent orientation--Jamaica standing alone, assuming that it is essentially First World, and can hold its own against competition from other global powers. A third position outside of these two is c) Jamaica as a part of Africa (however that is defined).
There are problematics concerning all three, but I propose that our best choice is the third (c). In a country that is easily defined as black African, with little to no ethnic distinction from black African nations from which we derive, I don't see any external, compelling force preventing us from declaring ourselves to be an offshore African nation. That would be radical. That would imply that we are at liberty to throw out the parts of our current governance system that are a thought-free hangover from colonial times. And while the colonial government has abandoned physical ownership of the island, and only the deluded can assume an independent Jamaica that can withstand international domination, a Jamaica linked to the African nations would be a different matter. Since there is no unified African nation, we would be one of many African nations, and just as entitled as any to assume leadership toward defining and bringing about such a unity. Such a unity would be the fulfillment of Marcus Garvey's vision, and bring some real meaning to having him as our first National Hero..
But this is all easy to say. Meanwhile, we have the SYSTEMATIC conditioning of our people to contend with. One can point fingers and blame the individuals, but it is the system we must blame. And the system works through numbers. If you can get the majority to behave a certain way, then democracy and voting will only ensure that this behavior will be perpetuated by leaders voted into power. Promoting individualism over collectivism is one way the system seems to keeps us weak and divided. St. Ann's Bay is an example of how "the system" has succeeded in creating abject, universal ignorance and apathy in one geopolitical African unit.
If we are to promote collectivism, we might best place the governance of given geographic units as the primary governance structure of the island.. This is why I originally suggested making St. Ann (the Garden Parish) and Trelawny (host of the Cockpit Country which supplies 40% of Jamaica's water) as a World Heritage Park, perhaps modeled after the Blue Mountains World Heritage Park. We could go into all this with infinitely greater depth, but we have to start somewhere.
A further suggestion is that we engage in this discussion as an intentional international group of expatriate and local Jamaicans, using Facebook as a primary tool of communication, organizing and
COCKPIT COUNTRY
Not sure why his is a bad idea, although it probably is: Since Falmouth is already a Heritage City (but managed badly), could it be mutually beneficial, while calling for a stop order on further Cockpit mining, to bring up the issue of making the whole of Trelawny (or at least Cockpit) a World Heritage Park? Could it be a matter of seeing how Falmouth was done, then spreading a wider net to extend the vision to the parish? Thereby attempting to correct what is wrong with the Falmouth management and giving the government an added justification to stop mining in Cockpit?
EAST PALO ALTO (EPA) AS A CENTER OF HISTORY
Within the space of a few years during the 90's, I conducted over 500 driving tours centered on the historic Weeks Neighborhood. I used my own car, and asked for no payment. I didn't get around to considering a tourist program for EPA HAS, much less one for the entirety of EPA. I would frequently tour the whole city, since it in its entirety offered something different and historic for my outsider tourists.
I left town just as IKEA, Home Depot and the rest were being constructed. A nearby housing development was also in its early stage, managed by EPA CAN DO. By the way, what does the N in EPA CAN DO stand for? If it's part of the following title, East Palo Alto Community And Neighborhood Development Organization, it fell down on the neighborhood part. There has been no consideration of neighborhoods, and no plan that I know of, for any of EPA's traditional neighborhood other than the one done by EPA HAS for the Weeks Neighborhood by means of the Weeks Neighborhood Community Plan.
So why was the plan ignored? What harm did it do? None that I can tell. It allowed for the same number of residences as the neighborhood was zoned for. What was wrong with that? The unit sizes envisioned were varied, allowing for diverse incomes. The old Weeks lots with their elegant deep lots with long views down it past large trees would be something any right thinking person would appreciate.
But this perfectly sensible plan that would have created a parklike neighborhood that all income levels could afford, was cut to ribbons for all kinds of foolish reasons. It was zoned residential, although neighborhood businesses on the wider avenues were valued and planned for. So why has it become chock full of large charter schools? Why were buyers able to imagine they could just sit on the land until large apartments could be persuaded to be built on them? One hears talk of making the neighborhood look like Manhattan. What is wrong with EPA to allow for these travesties of action and intention?
Bay Road was always there. It might have been an Indian track before Isaiah Woods built the village of Ravenswood along it around 1850. And the entire town west of Bay Road was laid out by Charles Weeks around 1920. That included University Avenue, extending all the way to Stanford. Weeks and Stanford worked together on this, and Weeks advertised the Weeks Poultry Colony, AKA Runnymede, now called the Weeks Neighborhood, as a University town. Rail lines ran along University. The next oldest neighborhood is Palo Alto Park, built in the 1920's. So the Weeks Neighborhood, with some extension into what is now Menlo Park (including O'connor Avenue, for instance) made up the great bulk of modern EPA up until the 1950's. And even including those 50's additions, the city's built environment is older than anything else around and is more deeply historic than anything else around. Palo Alto and the entire Mid Peninsula have been going about demolishing anything predating 1980. That makes EPA the last bastion of history in the region. The whole city could be a heritage park, and gain income by so being.
But who cares about history?
WHAT IS EDUCATION DOING TO HELP?
Without education, property owners can't see the value in their broken down wooden buildings. The buildings are broken down because they cost a lot to repair, and the people who know how to repair them conventionally are now few and far between.
In society we seem to follow programs. Slavery was a program, and was once widely seen as the way it was. British colonialism was a program, and once seen as normal. Since colonialism, a new program took over: It was an American system of consumerism and "modernism" based on concrete construction. That seems to still be the acceptable program in SAB. There are no end of supermarkets, it seems. Lot's of white concrete buildings with air condition. The ones I saw sold foreign products that were cheaper than Jamaican ones. The air conditioning was soothing on a hot day. The food was tasty, no matter if it was loaded with empty calories. It might have spiked diabetes, but I lack specific information.
But it doesn't have to be that way forever. Things do change when they're not working.
The foreign Chinese supermarkets are tearing out SAB heritage buildings. And SAB is supposed to be a historic city, right? Jamaica's first capital, correct? Something is clearly wrong with this picture. Tourists don't go to Jamaica to see what looks like Miami or Phoenix.
So where is the education program that trains people to repair and maintain the wooden buildings? Those wooden buildings are part of the heritage of my family and thousands of other SAB families. We don't have a tourist attraction if we tear that heritage down. We don't have a historic city if we tear those buildings down. We lose reference to the place Marcus was born and grew up in. But who is training the young people to value and maintain this heritage?
My thoughts run to the Marcus Garvey Technical High School. Does their program support the material heritage of Marcus Garvey's birthplace? If not, why not? What does their program support instead? The principal, Steven Golding, is also the local head of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which was created by the greatest son of SAB, Marcus Garvey. Does the SAB branch of the UNIA support preserving the material heritage of the UNIA? If not, why not? What does it support instead?
Does Mr. Golding support the preservation of Marcus Garvey's birth home? If he does, why does he not support the preservation of Garvey's hometown? If I didn't get it wrong, Garvey was taught early on through a program associated with 6 Bravo, recently torn down to build a Chinese supermarket. Is Mr. Golding aware of the Garvey and UNIA heritage that SAB is losing? Where is he? What is he up to? Does anybody know?
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