My urban design concept derives from a wish to acknowledge the story of place.
So often land development ignores and overrides the more tender stories of a place.
I seek to draw attention to landforms and the provenance of the land, the memories of earlier times, the association people have of certain places.
Too often and more commonly now, commercial development bulldozes this tender past, felling cherished vegetation, rerouting drainage from earlier contours found economically inconvenient, erasing a cherished history, creating a meaningless blank from a once-dear place.
I celebrate recognition of this fragile landlore, and the vanishing settings of our childhoods.
Development...
Turns a place into space
Which is then face valued -
Merely sold for a sum,
Which can never be paid,
Nor ever undone.
It overrides blandly
The call of the wild,
The wild nature places
We explored as a child.
Over tender reminders
Those great tractor-treads press;
There are few places now
Have escaped this ‘progress’.
And the temptation’s been always
To be taking, then turning
Memories to money.
But at last, we are learning.
-Ross Palmer