THE KENYATTA ATLAS
CaribLab Edition 01 / In Development
The Kenyatta Atlas is a spatial, ecological, historical, and political-economic study of Kenyatta Farms and the wider landscape in which it is situated. It begins from the proposition that land cannot be understood through acreage, property boundaries, or environmental characteristics alone. Caribbean land carries histories of cultivation and extraction, colonial property regimes, migration and inheritance, infrastructural investment and abandonment, ecological transformation, livelihood, memory, and forms of collective use that exceed the parcel itself. At Kenyatta, these relations are especially visible in the Great River, which forms roughly two-thirds of the property’s boundary and connects the farm materially and historically to a wider landscape.
The Atlas will document these relations before substantial intervention takes place. Topography, the Great River and its water systems, soil, vegetation, buildings, paths, agricultural practices, infrastructure, labor, surrounding settlements, public institutions, oral histories, archival records, and economic relationships will be assembled within a single research framework, allowing the farm to be understood as part of a larger social and ecological system rather than as an isolated development site.
The Atlas is also prospective. It asks how documenting what already exists can alter what becomes thinkable. Mapping the river, drainage, and movement of water may reveal where cultivation is viable and where particular interventions would create new risks. Recording existing vegetation may disclose ecological capacities that conventional development would remove. Oral histories may show how the farm, river, and surrounding landscape have been used differently across generations. Infrastructure mapping may expose the costs that households and communities absorb privately when public systems fail. Economic research may clarify which proposed uses produce durable capacity and which require continual subsidy.
In this sense, the Atlas is not a neutral inventory. It makes visible the relationships through which decisions about land become possible.
The Atlas will be organized through several overlapping layers, because the capacity to read these layers together is precisely what distinguishes an atlas from a conventional site report.
LAND
Property boundaries, topography, slopes, access, paths, existing structures, cultivated areas, unused land, and changing patterns of use.
RIVER + WATER
The Great River, rainfall, drainage, runoff, storage, seasonal variation, flooding, erosion, riverbank conditions, existing water infrastructure, and the possibilities for harvesting and retaining water on site. Because the river forms much of Kenyatta’s boundary, this layer will also examine how the farm is connected to ecological and social processes extending beyond the property itself. Particular attention will be given to how hurricanes and major rainfall events alter the river, reshape drainage and erosion patterns, affect access and cultivation, and expose the dependencies built into existing infrastructure.
ECOLOGY
Soils, vegetation, microclimates, biodiversity, productive species, invasive species, shade, habitat, riparian ecology, and ecological relationships that can guide future land use.
CULTIVATION
Current and historical crops, agricultural knowledge, labor practices, food production, propagation, agroforestry, and the economic possibilities of productive land.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Roads, electricity, water, telecommunications, waste, buildings, storage, transportation, and the costs imposed by inadequate or uneven infrastructural provision.
HISTORY
Land-use change, ownership and inheritance, settlement, cultivation, regional development, archival records, photographs, memory, and previous attempts to transform the landscape. Oral histories from Reading and surrounding communities will also document changing relations to the Great River, including its uses, crossings, floods, agricultural significance, and place within everyday life, as well as the ways hurricanes and major storms have altered the landscape, damaged infrastructure, reorganized livelihoods, and become part of local memory.
LIVELIHOOD
Labor, income-generating activities, informal economies, agricultural markets, household economies, maintenance, and the relationship between productive activity and institutional sustainability.
INSTITUTIONS
Schools, churches, state agencies, farms, businesses, community organizations, cultural institutions, universities, and other organizations through which resources and authority move around the site.
LIVITY
Everyday practices through which land, work, sociality, spiritual life, food, movement, gathering, and ecological knowledge are joined. This layer keeps the Atlas from treating the site only as an arrangement of physical systems.
FUTURES
Alternative land-use scenarios, research questions, design propositions, prototypes, costs, and observations about what different forms of development would require. These scenarios will also test how proposed interventions perform under conditions of hurricane exposure, flooding, infrastructure failure, and other forms of climatic disruption.