CENTER FOR PUBLIC LIFE

The objective for this project was to create a center for public life in the downtown mall of the city of Charlottesville. We visited this mall as a field trip for 3 days to diagram the city center. We were given a site on the mall to rebuild our center. With the current historic atmosphere of racial tensions in the city and the fact that the location of the 2017 fatal car attack, Heather Heyer way, is in my precinct and parallel to my site, thought I would use the information learned on my trip. Racial and economic topography, is the idea that Charlottesville, like many older cities in the US, was built excluding people of color and the lower income class using the topography of the city. As you travel along the city, you can see examples of this, particularly on Heather Heyer way.

At the top of Heather Heyer way, you see mostly private businesses catered to the wealthy, and you can see all the way down to the mall. Once at the mall, you cannot see anything past the railroad. Although the railroad is directly south of the mall, and in easy walking distance, right past the railroad there is a large public housing complex right across the street. This causes the out of sight, out of mind phenomenon to occur with regards to the economic disparity of the city.