o.f.f. once and future flint

my pal christina and i share an office on north campus. she is a planner in flint where she works on all manner of abandoned properties. they at the genesee institute may come into possession of the parcel known as chevy in the hole, a GM-owned site. you may know this as the huge toxic brownfield. you may also know it as the site of the sit-down strikes from the 1930s. through an unmatched uncanny series free and associative thinking, she and i starting cooking up an idea that would potentially make for a totally great professional planning project for grad students.

she and i started batting around ideas for this collaborative project. i had just foisted the description of my new upper-level undergrad class on her when we limned the contours of a potentially fab idea. (this was after we had a brief session on why she needs to stand firm in her salary negotiations ... (i counseled that she needed to think like a wasp and demand at least a 10% increase with her new position. i even cracked out a calculator (solar-powered).))

anyway, the project may involve leading storytelling and listening sessions to help the community
members as they transition from the once vital and vibrant city, and the blight of the 1980s and 1990s -- perhaps to ease the move to a just, post-industrial city.

this past week, christina and some umich grad students hosted a public presentation about potential reuses of the site. she was struck by how many people turned out (94) and insisted on telling their stories about the site. some of the institute's leaders listened politely but felt that the memories were getting the way. it was clear to christina that residents need to "process" their experiences of the site. i said maybe they need to grieve or mourn or remember. anyway, we decided that we need to capture and record those memories. as part of the way to help them embrace the "visioning process" to clean up the site and to handle its disposition. i quipped that we should call the project once and future flint. with insurgent art programs and on. maybe with nick?

christina finally shot down my idea for the fields of sunflowers. sunflowers, as you likely know, could greatly accelerate remediation on the site. i always go on with these romantic notions of the sunflowers and their incredible natural ability to suck toxins a la chernobyl. (phytoremediation is really exciting). but christina explained to me today that the sunflowers would draw people to the site and that would be very dangerous as the flowers would be highly toxic...they would need to be harvested immediately and treated as toxic waste.


oh well.