By Tom & Carol Braford
Fifty years ago, I wrote a white paper called ‘The Soulard Resettlement Project’ that was an instant sensation when I presented it at The Sharing Place in the Central West End. It resulted in the establishment of The Harbinger Housing Co-op, a self managed, highly successful Intentional Community that quickly fostered the development of a half dozen others. This almost instantaneously stabilized the neighborhood enough to spur forward the faltering individual rehabber movement and to get us invited by the then director of SLDC, Dean Burns, to a weekend long retreat In New Harmony, Indiana to plan the future of the Soulard Neighborhood.
I thought that was ancient history, but I am having an experience of deja vu all over again with Downtown St. Louis now in need of a similar fix. So, you can go to our website to read the new 2.0 version of The St. Louis Resettlement saga and learn how you can beat the rush this time around and get involved now.
Back in the 70’s, we did not realize that what we had done was the equivalent of creating a social contagion that had economic and environmental overtones. We now have all had a crash course, however, in how to create, not just a contagion, but an intentionally scientifically guided contagion that becomes endemic to an area and then pandemic in the world in ways that are beneficial to all.
Ironically, we have the perfect vector for that in the current data center controversy in the City of St. Louis, our country and the world. We just need to be the tail wagging the dog, instead of the other way around. As someone pointed out at the latest St Louis Data Center hearing recently, Generative AI is the biggest existential threat since the development of nuclear energy, so the only redeeming thing that could come out of it is solving the other existential threats that hang over us like the sword of Damocles, chief of which is global warming.
But what if those of us with hearts and souls as well as minds and bodies still have the upper hand over those who run huge data centers and their robots, at least for now? Isn’t it then, not just our duty, but our destiny to demonstrate a better way? What if there is no better place and time than here and now? Destiny called a dozen and then dozens of the faithful 50 years ago to Soulard, and I believe she is calling again, and that this time around hundreds if not thousands will answer her clarion call to save St. Louis, civilization and our beautiful blue green marble of a planet from ourselves. I invite you to be one of those Intrepid Pioneers of the Urban Frontier who settles down to the business at hand of Resettling St. Louis.
You can contact us at braford@sbcglobal.net or at www.ArizmendiEcovillage.com.