CJR
To hear a local (Lauderdale resident) comment that Walker Corporation is all about creating trails, parks and promenades of which our area already has a proud abundance, I wonder; have any Walker representatives walked or ridden our trails, windsurfed our bay or swum at our beach? A place involves experiential interpretation, and a comparative relationship to other places. And so, it appears, in peddling the bizarre “Lauderdale Quay”, no-one at Walker Corporation has Ralphs Bay fully constructed. It’s like driving into Oklahoma, staying a week in a motel, never venturing out and considering the place, there onwards, from that first initial perception, then filling experiential gaps with whatever’s convenient to one’s personally chosen representation of “Oklahoma”. And this is what I did with Texas.
I RECENTLY spent some time in Texas and later, Oklahoma.
And so it strikes me … A place must be fully constructed; each place a human development of meaning infused within a space. A person can’t arrive at a place and presume to know it without having the wherewithal to stride forth and experience it. Travelling the freeway into Oklahoma recently I wasn’t impressed with the place I approached.
I knew we were twelve hours from any coast and that there were no mountains and virtually no hills. So much was unfamiliar; the birds, customs (helmet-less motorcyclists), road markings, cars. There a week, as each day passed I appreciated the place more due to the pleasantness of my time there, the compassion of the people I was with and their enthusiasm in introducing me to all that was ‘best of’.
To hear a local (Lauderdale resident) comment that Walker Corporation is all about creating trails, parks and promenades of which our area already has a proud abundance, I wonder; have any Walker representatives walked or ridden our trails, windsurfed our bay or swam at our beach? A place involves experiential interpretation, and a comparative relationship to other places. And so, it appears, in peddling the bizarre “Lauderdale Quay”, no-one at Walker Corporation has Ralphs Bay fully constructed. It’s like driving into Oklahoma, staying a week in a motel, never venturing out and considering the place, there onwards, from that first initial perception, then filling experiential gaps with whatever’s convenient to one’s personally chosen representation of “Oklahoma”. And this is what I did with Texas.
I had a preconceived “identity” of Texas that was negative and which scared me. It was a preconception of rough rodeo, polygamy crime, gluttony and some bad spaghetti westerns. I was
able to spend my entire Texas week safely within a five-star hotel and I did. I knew that “mine back home” shared a similar preconception of Texas and there was no compulsion to review or prove it. There was cowardice in not going to the trouble of relieving the stereotype and I’m sure I missed out because I was that coward.
It appears Walker Corporation is operating on some misconceived notion of “Ralphs Bay: shit hole” which it is convenient to never replace or revise with genuine place-centred experience. What sorry consequences for a Resource Management and Planning System with obligations for sustainable development when a cowardly developer won’t look outside his hotel room?
