East St. Louis Action Research Project
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
LA 437/465 Final Reports
Olivette Park Neighborhood
as a People's District
Bharat Mehra
Miles to go before we sleep....
Walking down the gutted, run-down streets of the city of East St. Louis,
desolate and in decay; amidst mauled, empty houses that were once homes
in a time long ago when their rooms were filled with innocent laughter of
children and the streets were friendly places to be in; when gardens were
not uncared, piles of debris scattered as aggresive lots around hostile
buildings, weary from disuse but were places to chat with neighbors across
the fence or wave at passersby strolling along the street; and where there
was a positive sense of community pride and fruitful consolidation of people
and places in a qualitatively progressive environment; one is today literally
forced into a corner and confronted to think - has our society raced so
far ahead of us that it should offer and we should settle for such a quality
of life, detoriation of inter-people relationships and the image of the
city, miles away from what they were meant to be ? Where are all those homely
neighborhoods and welcoming cultural settings with their central, active
places where people were expected to live and work, worship and trade, interact
and feel protected, or just be simply happy? Is it after all, asking for
too much if one seeks these basic tenets of life condusive for a healthy
environment, or is it yet not too late for people to come together and work
towards concretizing their aspirations and initiating progressive change
leading to a worthy future?
Document author(s): Bharat Mehra
HTML by : Bharat Mehra
Last modified: 3 Deccember, 1995
LA 437/465 Final Reports
East St. Louis Action Research Project
