The P.E.W.P.E.W. Strategy (Policies on Eradicating Wealth Inequality, Poverty & Exploitation within our World) looks at what a utopian future would look like for lifting impoverished residents in Richmond, Virginia into a brighter future. This results in the Monument Avenue Spine, a 5.4 mile stretch including housing, retail, education, recreational spaces and a transport network.
In a country that is slowly rejecting the notion that the government has a major role in reducing poverty, P.E.W.P.E.W. looks to alleviate the suffering felt by swelling masses of meal-skipping people living in threadbare conditions. Through an understanding of the current political landscape, identifying existing infrastructure and an insight into macroeconomics, P.E.W.P.E.W. provides a solution that lifts the new residents of Richmond Avenue into a better life.
The spine uses a current racially driven conversation surrounding the existing Confederate monuments along Monument Avenue as a platform for change, and a catalyst to provide better lives for over 40,000 Richmond residents living in poverty.
A tram line services the entire avenue, using the existing monuments as transportation stops. These are places that provide context, re-educating the public on who these men were and why they have been immortalised. Alongside them are new monuments to notable Richmond residents such as Ella Fitzgerald and Edgar Allen Poe, alongside other Civil War figures such as Harriet Tubman and General Ulysses Grant.
The Monument Avenue Spine presents a new legacy for Richmond, Virginia - one that shows that it is more than its Confederate legacy. History has previously been divisive, but this is a chance for history to reunite Richmond for a brighter future.
ARCH7006 - Utopian Urbanism at The University of Queensland. Semester 2, 2018
Course Coordinators - Nicole Sully & Josh Spillane.
