A recent resurgence of downtown development in southwest cities, especially with regard to public space, has had mixed results, says UNM Center for the Southwest director Virginia Scharff.
In the last few years, Albuquerque's once forgotten downtown has seen a veritable cornucopia of sidewalk cafes, entertainment businesses and bars spring up virtually overnight. But the people who hatch the plans and provide the money for such projects - from nonprofit organizations to public institutions to corporate investors, often fail to communicate with each other, resulting in projects that may represent utopia for only a select few, she says.
With that in mind, the center will hold a series of talks and tours during a three-day conference this weekend.
"Paradise Paved: Utopian Imaginations and the Southwestern City" will feature scholars, planners and historians from all over the nation leading discussions on various city planning issues, such as transportation, historical preservation, alternative lifestyles and outcomes of revitalization projects in other cities.
"Basically, people will look at utopian visions that come into this city," Scharff said, adding that many of the talks will address individual notions of what a city should be. "Basically, 'what would it look like if I was able to realize my dream,'" she said. "We're asking the question 'what happens when we take different kinds of people's dreams seriously when we look at the landscape of Albuquerque and other southwestern cities.'"
She said the center hoped to "create conversations between people who have previously been talking in separate spaces."
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"With a united front between public institutions like the mayor's office, private capitalists and citizen activists, we're trying to create a new public place downtown," she said. "We're trying to see the ways people are trying to reinvent public space in Albuquerque. When you get people together from their own disciplines and they have to explain themselves across those disciplines, I think surprising things happen."
She said that often attempts at creating positive public spaces can go awry, citing the Downtown plaza as an example.
"This was really an effort on the part of city to create a public space, but the problem was, they turned it into the hottest, hardest, most paved place that anyone could imagine," she said. "It's certainly not inviting."
Moreover, she added, many concepts of public space end up being nothing more than "car corridors."
"Most of the time people come into a situation with good intentions, but very often they'll come out realizing how badly they've screwed up," she said.
"Paradise Paved" kicks off Friday at 7 p.m. at the UNM Continuing Education Center with a keynote address by Chris Wilson, the J.B. Jackson Professor of Cultural Landscape Studies at UNM. He will present a slide lecture called "Return to the Walking City: New Urbanist Simulations of Utopia."
On Saturday beginning at 8:30 a.m., two UNM professors will present "Paradise Stuccoed: Historic Preservation and the Symbolism of Cultural Unity," a look at the re-creation of Old Town as a timeless village in the midst of Albuquerque's rapidly changing urban landscape, and "The Madonna on the Road: Public Art, Memory and Mobility in 1920s New Mexico," a study of a statuary and park that was removed to make way for the new Federal Courthouse. The lectures will be held in Room 125 of Dane Smith Hall.
Later Saturday morning, lectures will be offered about development and history in Taos and the emergence of an urban culture in what some call the "Republic of Boulder," Colorado. These lectures will also take place in Dane Smith Hall.
Afternoon lectures on Saturday will feature Oberlin College assistant professor Pablo Mitchell, who will discuss the lingering effects on Albuquerque's urban landscape of the city's most notorious brothel-keeper, Lizzie McGrath, as well as a look at mobility between reservations and the city and its benefits to gay, lesbian and transgendered American Indians.
On Sunday, a variety of caravans will take visitors to several sites in Albuquerque for discussions on neighborhood revitalization, development, and the creation, or destruction, of public spaces.
The tour will culminate near the new Alvarado Transportation Center with a speech by Mitchell, who will discuss the pitfalls and benefits to cities resulting from the emergence of rail travel.
All "Paradise Paved" programs are free and open to the public. The conference is sponsored by the Center for the Southwest, which is a part of the history department; the History and Earth and Planetary Sciences departments, and other university and community organizations. For more information, call 277-7688.
