Tuesday February 5, 2008
Around the Redlands
A few photos from a bicycle trip around the Redlands a couple of weekends ago:
I think this is a field of little plots where folks in the surrounding developments can have little vegetable gardens. One-way streets crisscross and for now it’s very barren and abandoned.
There really are more nurseries then farms, though plenty of each.
And yes, plenty of suburban hell here too. Some of it recent, but plenty of it is classic 70s and 80s vintage. Unlike Miami, folks cruise around on ATVs for fun.
Actually, this is South Miami. Another cute old house on the chopping block. Is that limestone construction, does anyone know?
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Wednesday April 18, 2007
Redlands real-estate album
Click image for slide-show.
These images were made for an e-bay auction of some property down in the Redlands part of Homestead, and they show how quickly that area is being transformed from agricultural to suburban use. In fact, Gabriel, who discovered the set, bemoans the transformation. I’m mainly appreciating them for their inherent beauty, and so they’re presented here in a full-resolution slideshow.
They’re a sort of weird Dan Graham and Barbara Kruger. Apparently photographed with a disposable film camera, they were lovingly scanned and overlaid with magenta all-caps boldface text. One of them even has a line connecting the text to a spot in the picture.
The photographs depict McMansions, both cookie-cutter and outrageous, being constructed, as well as some photos of the surrounding streets and farms. We get a real sense of being between two places, for example in the 4th image, where a dirt country road and a wrecked fence suddenly find themselves juxtaposed with a house that will soon be occupied by an upper-middle-class family. Occasionally we get a glimpse of a slice of the realtor’s car, and in one picture a man spreads his arms invitingly, standing on farmland that will no doubt not exist in another few years.
Gabriel is right — there is a real melancholy to these images. But this is the reality that has always been Miami — people are moving here all the time, and large-parceled suburbs have been swallowing farms since the 1920’s. The transformation in downtown is a part of this too, and while I wish more people liked living in urban high-rises, the truth is that owning a big fat house is a pretty standard human desire. As went Miami, Coral Gables, and Aventura (they didn’t name it “Ives Dairy Road” out of whimsy), so go the Redlands.
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