Protest, insurrection and political turmoil have all contributed to a renewed awareness about racial injustices and democratic instability. These issues present new challenges to Americans’ public space designers and users. Cultural spasms have led to contested public spaces that are sites of killings, protests on streets and parks, as well as forgotten burial grounds. These spaces require a new form environmental justice.
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Environmental justice is often seen from the perspective that pollution has on people, land, and water. But the spaces that have been contaminated by the killing of Black Americans, as well as those soiled by a history filled with slavery and white supremacy, require environmental justice. They also have adisproportionate impact on Black and Brown communities.
Therefore, planners, architects and landscape architects are at the center a shifting racial and political dialogue. Designers are asked to reflect on their place in a country that is rife with systemic racism. There are new opportunities for designers to overcome biases and work toward spatial equity.
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The American and international discourse on race, justice and justice was changed by George Floyd’s assassination in Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 25, 2020. The White House removed Confederate monuments from its grounds and organized protests in the wake of this tragic incident. There were many protests against police brutality, as well as extensive academic and grassroots discussions about racism in America. Although there are many more Black victims to racism at the hands police, the brutal imagery of George Floyds’ murder sparked a collective humanity among the American and global public.
The veil of white supremacy has been exposed again, this time due to the untimely death of another Black man. The outpouring support was swift, and protest marches featured people of all ages for the first-time in decades. However, the government’s fury in retaliation was swift with more police brutality and protester arrests. They also labeled the Black Lives Matters organization as a negative socialist left-wing group.
Mayor Muriel bowser, in an attempt to counter the false narratives about BLM, created the Black Lives Matter Plaza, a multi-block-long street wall directly in front of Washington, D.C. In a sense, the plaza has become a first physical protest response in the form public art and place. Mayor Bowser was reflective on This was her motivation. We had the chance to communicate that message loudly on a street that is very important in our city. This message is to the American people: Black lives matter, Black humanity does matter, and we, as a city, raise that up.
George Floyd’s murder led to a discussion about public protest rights and public space creation and appropriation. But, the most important issue was the disposition of Confederate Monuments. Confederate monuments, Black Lives Matter Plaza, and other related topics sparked lively debate within the planning, landscape architecture, and architecture professions. How can one memorialize protest sites and also de-memorize those with incomplete historical interpretations?
Environmental justice often involves reducing inequitable distributions and hazards in communities of color. However, we must recognize that thedisproportionate impact of police killings and other types of homicides on communities are also felt by those of color. An expanded definition of environmental Justice could include efforts to memorialize tragic events and secure and honour these spaces. Although these issues will continue evolving, the necessity to use public space for environmental justice advancement will not be diminished. It will always be necessary to better reflect the truth of history.
In a SmithsonianArticlePeter Schwartzstein talks about the connections between successful protests and urban space. He suggested that what is notable, perhaps, about ongoing protests in the U.S.A. and many other countries, is his observation. [countries]It is evident that different urban designs can have a significant impact on the success of a movement and sometimes even lead to different outcomes for the same grievances. He also speaks about the role of designers and the history public space. He says that urban design will be a more prominent protest tool in the future, after decades of tightening restrictions, in which public spaces have shrunk, shifted or disappeared.
However, history cannot be altered. Carl Becker, a historian, suggests some ideasHistory is what the present chooses about the past. Historical monuments, among other things are a sign of power and who has the right to decide how history is remembered in public spaces. Landscape architects can advocate for a deeper understanding of history when redesigning public spaces. Confederate monuments have a clear and distinct history that is not fluid.
Karen L. Fox clarifies The authenticity argument The New York TimesWhen she stated that the heydays of monument building (1890 to 1920) was also a period of extreme racial violent, Southern whites reacted against the little progress made by African Americans in decades after the Civil War. During a long period of lynching, as monuments were built, so did the bodies and children of black people, women, or children.
Two projects illustrate how environmental justice can help places where loss has been experienced. The Tamir Rice Memorial in Cleveland, Ohio illustrates how a space can evoke memory. The Memorial to Enslaved Labourers at University of Virginia (UVA).Charlottesville, Virginia is an example of how a space can recognize slavery and servitude.
These projects show the challenges facing designers as America deals mainly with protests, police violence, and a history of systemic racist behavior. The U.S. Capitol Grounds is next for landscape architects due to the January 6, 2020 insurrection at Capitol and the need of increased security.
A Memorial of Protest and Pain
Landscape architects can now participate as citizens because of the changing understandings of social, political, and cultural injustice. Landscape architects now have the opportunity to recognize that racial injustice is a systemic problem thatdisproportionately affects Black and Brown communities. These police shootings can cause serious harm to families and communities. The challenge for designers is to create spaces that recognize the loss of life, respect the context, speak to racial inequity, and provide a sense to resolve.
Although the incident surrounding Tamir Rice’s death by Cleveland police officers on November 22, 2014 was suspicious, no charges were brought against the officers. An Article in The New York TimesReporters Shaila Dewan, Jr. and Richard A. Oppel, Jr. poignantly described Tamir’s playful visit to the park along with a friend, as well as the toy airsoft-style gun that he carried.
A neighbor called police to report a child playing in the park with a gun. Oppel and Dewan indicate that he took the gun with him and walked to the gazebo’s edge. He could have been wandering aimlessly or attracted by the sight that a squad car was speeding across the lawn. The boy, Tamir Rice (12 years old), was shot by a police officer seconds later. The tragic death of this Black child justifies the protest and the memorial his mother worked so hard for.
Samaria Rice, Tamir’s mother, has since created the Tamir Rice FoundationTo advance social justice and to remember her son, a memorial will be built within the Frank E. Cudell recreation center and park area. The site where Tamir was killed will be the location of the memorial. These memorials are becoming too common, but they can be a way to create a space or remembrance in a new type landscape.
2020 saw the Tamir rice Memorial project move quickly. It began with the solicitation of designers and the hiring Black landscape architecture firm. Design Jones, LLCTo design the memorial. The Cleveland-based firm Deru Landscape ArchitectureThe team’s official landscape architect is Samaria Rice. Samaria Rice, her daughter Tajai, and community members were fully involved in the design of all memorial design concepts.
The Tamir Rice Memorial, designed by the design team makes sacred a space of injustice in the remembrance and honor of a young Black child full potential. It uses the shapes of the box and the butterfly to represent what Tamir was, the freedom flight, and what society gave him, the confinement. The heart of the memorial is an inscribed granite stone with Tamir’s image and text, which commemorates his life. As a 2016 memorial to Tamirs brother, Tajai, the butterfly garden was first built with her sister Tajai’s help. The Cleveland City Council provided funding for the garden.
The path leading to this memorial stone represents the evolution of Tamir’s life. It also incorporates and revitalizes an existing butterfly garden, which becomes a creative start to the memorial space. The dry creek and curved pathway create a stormwater runoff mitigation area. As the years pass, it will become clearer how this memorial can help a community and, especially, a family in pain.
With the help and assistance of the Chicago Fire Department the original gazebo from which Tamir was killed was taken down and moved to Chicago. Rebuild Foundation. Theaster Gates, founder and CEO of the foundation, was an activist and artist who assisted Samaria Rice in this important relocation and memorial.
The reconstructed gazebo, which includes the original concrete picnic table, now sits on the north yard of 6760 S. Stony Island Ave., and was rededicated as an opportunity, a platform, and a prospect, according to Adam Green, associate professor at the University of Chicago Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. The Chicago Tribune. A Rice family spokesperson stated that the Chicago gazebo site won’t be its final home: The gazebo [is]Finding a permanent place in Cleveland, and returning to Cleveland.
Diane Jones Allen, FASLA principal at Design Jones LLC, and professor and director of landscape architect at University of Texas at Arlington states that Samaria Rices spoke to me about the beauty of her son, and the terrible tragedy of this event. Her words clearly influenced my design of the memorial.
A Memorial of Recognition
George Floyd’s murder not only sparked a worldwide racial justice movement but also reignited decades-long debates over how to remove Confederate symbols and monuments from the country. However, history has shown that Confederate monuments are still there and that monument removals are necessary. Most often, Southern pride is used to justify not removing Confederate Monuments.
Keisha Blain is an associate professor of history at University of Pittsburgh. These defenders should be encouragedFail to recognize that Confederate symbols and monuments were created to intimidate Black Americans and to uphold a revisionist and racist version of history. These symbols and monuments already erase history, which is what their defenders claim they did by demanding their removal.
A team of community members and designers were busy designing the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at UVA, in the midst of a Unite the Right protest against the removal of the statue Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Emancipation park in Charlottesville, Virginia.
These two activities, a revisionist protest to preserve remnants the Confederacy and an historical acknowledgment of slavery’s damages to Black Americans, are strikingly juxtaposed. The tragic death of Heather D. Heyer, 32-year-old Charlottesville resident, was caused by an angry white supremacist driving through a crowd. In contrast, the enslaved Laborers Memorial Team efforts resulted the April 11, 2020 dedication ceremony of a memorial that honors the lives and work of enslaved laborers whose property was owned and rented to UVA.
The Memorial to Slaved Laborers is an honor and recognition of a buried past that has been brought to the surface. It is in stark contrast to Emancipation Park’s General Robert E. Lee monument. Hweler + Yoon Architecture designed the memorial, which included Eric Hweler, a Harvard Graduate School of Design professor, and Meejin Yoon, Dean of Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. They collaborated closely with Dr. Mabel O. Wilson, historian and designer, who is also a professor at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and founder of Studio&. They also collaborated together with Gregg BleamFASLA, landscape architect, community facilitator, Dr. Frank Dukes, artist Eto Olutigbe
The memorial responds the the fraught history and trauma of UVA by being an open-form, a broad gesture in stone that is welcoming as if waiting for visitors to complete it. It is a form that is open to meaning, alluding the African ring cry and space of shelter and gathering.
The Memorial is also incomplete in that it is not finished. The list of names is conspicuously incomplete. Eric Hweler said that the memorial’s unfinished nature also speaks to the historical legacy of slavery and the ongoing work needed to address anti-Black racism and bias in the present. This memorial reminds people that history can be reinterpreted according to biases. Revisionist rhetoric and personal bias are not allowed to influence the truthful reading.
The academy began to discuss systemic racism and the sale and ownership of slaves as a means of sustaining institutional or personal wealth. This reconciliation has been led by Brown University, Georgetown University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. UVA and other universities also participated in this process. This is the beginning of a model that can be used by corporations, cities, or other places of power.
Dr. Marcus Martin was Vice President and Chief Officer of Diversity at UVA in 2013. He proposed the following: Presidents Commission on Slavery & the UniversityTo further research the university’s history of slave ownership. The Commission’s main goal was to report on UVAs historical relation with slavery and highlight opportunities for commemoration and recognition.
This powerful statement was made by the design team:
Between 1817-1865, when the Union Army liberated Albermarle County’s enslaved, an estimated 4000 enslaved workers worked on Grounds of UVA. They created and maintained the famous grounds, pavilions and Rotunda, which were rented out by the University. The memorials are historical inscriptions and commemorative forms that honor the dualities of slavery, the pain of bonds and the hope for a better future. It celebrates the bonds that formed community and helped to resist the dehumanizing violence that shaped daily life at UVA. This memorial is a place for the public to remember, learn and understand their contributions.
This particular memorial, located in the front yard Thomas Jefferson’s vision, is truly environmental justice on an enormous scale. It is bold and the memorial’s form grounds it in a way that makes it feel like the circular form rises from Earth as the voice for the forgotten slave laborers.
Columbia University’s Dr. Mabel Wilson stated in the team design statement that this memorial confronts a campus that was designed to express the highest aspirations and yet conceal the oppression suffered by the enslaved who realized Jeffersons vision. The campus has been home to Jefferson for nearly 50 years. [The Memorial]It provides a valuable space for active engagement in the grim reality that slavery and systemic racists are still a problem for the nation.
The Future
Eight months after George Floyds death on May 25, the January 6, 2020 insurrection at Washington, D.C., was another shocking bookend to that May 25 incident, causing a cultural tsunami. Americans and the entire world have come to terms with the fact that democracy in America is a fabrication. It is a lack of authenticity in citizenship that forces America to face its past and current history of racial injustices.
David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times, Reflected January 6 in terms moralityWhen he wrote, human beings exist at moral dimensions that are too lofty and savage for the contemporary American mind. That building was invaded by the mob. [the Capitol]Wednesday revealed the depths of this abyss. This week’s atrocity was not only a tragedy, but a glimpse into the atavistic nativism which threatens to grip America’s soul. The rampage reminded us of the fact that if Black people had done such a thing, the hallways would have been stained with blood. Brooks makes the nuanced argument, that even though there is democratic protest by a majority Black group, and not undemocratic insurrection from a predominantly white group, there is inequality.
The insurrection at U.S. Capitol poses another spatial challenge. It is difficult to both protect the Capitol and allow for democratic movement by Americans. The U.S. Capitol Police maintained for many months that the seven-foot-high fence should be kept in place. Muriel Bowser, the Washington, D.C. mayor, and many Congressional Representatives, argued that the fences were not democratic. Landscape architects will undoubtedly be called upon to create a long-term spatial mediation.
The UVA Memorial to Enslaved Laborers and the Tamir Rice Memorial are both linked. They aim to address the lives of Black Americans by addressing issues of race and place. These places continue bringing attention and a degree reconciliation to police violence, as well as the buried history American slavery. These projects highlight the need for more solutions to racial inequalities. Similar sites will continue to grow in number, so it is important to provide creative solutions that educate and uplift the public.
January 6 demonstrates that environmental justice relating to race and place will continue to dominate for some time. This new environmental justice allows landscape architects to show their citizenship by recognizing the ongoing racial, spatial and ugly racial disparities in the United States. We must commit to authenticity that is rooted in history, facts, and current events if we are to create more democratic public spaces across America.
Glenn LaRue SmithFASLA cofounder and principal. PUSH studioWashington, D.C., founder and former president of The Black Landscape Architects Network (BlackLAN).. His landscape architecture projects include garden designs and urban waterfronts. He also redevelops communities, parks, and memorial monuments. He has directed graduate programs in landscape architecture at two historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Florida A&M University and Morgan State University.
This article has been adapted and reprinted with permissionAvenues, a publication of the Urban Design Committee of the Washington Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
This article was originally published by The Dirt.