Did you know that Professor earned a degree in Urban Planning? Once I learned this fact, I began to ask a lot of questions about neighborhoods, communities, towns, cities, and nations. I was blessed to receive information about enhancing the morality of a community, fortifying the entrance, center and corners, and restoring life to a community in decline. I continue to follow the science of urban planning, and recently came across an article titled Mental Maps and the Neuroscience of Neighborhood Blight published in Pacific Standard. I hear Professor’s whispers once again.
It seems that we have “place cells” in our brain’s that are activated when we enter an environment. It is our memories that provide information to these cells. If you hear “Watts,” you remember the riots of 1965 that left 34 dead and more than 1,000 injured in the city of Los Angeles. The dramatic news coverage of raging fires, narrated with words like “looters,” and “hoodlums,” left an unforgettable mark. We, to this day, think of Watts as the most dangerous place in LA. Yet, it is no longer the case.
To revive a community that has been repeatedly read as a landscape of blight, fear, and even violence—to repair the damage done by our memories of place—we have to “convince people to re-experience” the place, to “update” their memories and beliefs. In a sense, according to researchers, we can “hack” our mental maps to change a neighborhood’s trajectory.
In this article it was suggested that one way to do so is to focus on telling the history of each neighborhood introducing tourists and outsiders to a neighborhood in decline, drawing them back and instilling new life. They call it “changing labels.”
Here are Professor words of wisdom from many years ago:
To revive a downtown that has been decimated by flight to the suburbs, create cultural events downtown that restore the history, excite the imagination, and delight the creative spirit. Sing. Dance. Provide places for sport, relaxation, and contemplation. Remember how this happened. Introduce something new. “Redefine the neighborhood.”
He was asking us to change our mental maps—our neurology.
“Only when these origin tales are understood can these restricted zones in our mental maps start to be filled in. And only then can change really begin.”
Science is catching up, and our cities need our personal touch.
With Immense Gratitude for H. H. Grandmaster Professor Lin Yun