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Seven Fridays in South Phoenix

Observations, Reflections, and Photographs by Matthew Alan Lord

Memory Map Exercise for Oakville, Missouri

The past is a foreign country, it is said, and this holds true for the memory map I have just finished rendering.  The map below represents not one but two snapshots in time. Only after I was well along in the process did I realize I was constructing two messages.  The first, of course, is the date I chose to represent.  The second, subtler portrait it paints conveys how I presently see myself as a shaped by my experiences in that time and place.  I chose to represent Oakville at a time when I was aware of more than just the backyard.

Oakville, Missouri was and is an unincorporated suburb of Saint Louis County.  My parents moved into one of the first subdivisions built there several years earlier.  New houses were still coming out of the ground around the corner.  I then spent my youth watching as suburbia spread into the area.

The map says much about my family’s social network at the time.  It focused on the church and the affiliated school we attended.  My main connections outside of that related to soccer in the Catholic Youth Council league, and so a few of those fields are noted.  Other schools also show up, as do the then-new shopping plazas and grocery stores.  When we moved there, Telegraph Road was a two lane state highway, but was “always under construction.”  Little other detail is present, outside the two most prominent features in my mind: “The Woods” and “The Library,” so named as if there were no other.  The Woods was partially destroyed and replaced by The Library by this time.  I spent countless hours out in nature and in books, both fond memories.  Combined with experiencing suburbanization first hand, my time in The Woods and The Library may explain why I now am studying how another community is dealing with growth. By becoming an Urban Environmental Planner, I hope to help other communities make better choices than Oakville did.

Click on image for Memory Map