Utility poles disfigure what was once a Virgin Island paradise.
Ian Nain's portentous book "Outrage" records a journey he made from Southampton to Carlisle in 1955. It constitutes a horror story of insensitive postwar town planning.
If today, the ghost of Ian Nain was to make a similar journey in the British Virgin Islands, he would unearth a similar scenario. Not only does the East End look like the West End and all the places in between, but they are collectively doing their best to look like a smaller version of Miami or Dubai. Fifty years ago, Virgin Island poet Sheila Hyndman she prophesied what was to come, but no one took heed of her warning.
The writing was on the wall in the 1970's and it has been downhill since then. The island's fixation on wealth, corruption and a disastrous hurricane has hastened the decline.
After viewing hundreds of images and hours of video footage related to the BVI’s recovery from hurricane Irma, it became clear that sensitivity to the built environment has been sadly lacking. Ugly utility poles are a case in point. Their impact on the natural environment is worse than that of a hurricane. The flooding of low-lying areas is related, not so much to rainfall, but to indiscriminate cutting of the island's terrain with backhoe and bulldozer. Nature has a way of building back without scaring the landscape.
The opening image is a stretch of road that runs between what was once an idyllic cove on one hand and a fertile valley on the other. The images below show the proposed West End Ferry Terminal and the East End Visitor Welcome "Facility".
This documentary tells of the Ian Nain's fight to save Britain from the blight of Subtopia.
The title of this post is taken from Sheila Hydman's poem To Virgin Gorda.
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