Thoughts on Gert Town

-MATT DOURDIS (via email)
When we first arrived in Gert Town, the first thing I noticed was the devastation. The area looked run down and dilapadated. However, I believe that was how I perceived the area because that was what I was told to expect. Though, when I took a moment to truly assess the area, I noticed something much more encompassing than the destruction: the re-construction. On some streets, there would be a dilapadated lot next to a re-finished duplex. The juxtaposition of both the ravaged and the re-built perfectly illustrates the spirit that the Gert Town Initiative. The people of Mid-Town have taken an awful situation, perpetuated by red-tape and bureaucractic road blocks, and have begun to re-establish themselves, not only as individuals, but as a community. Ultimately, this is what our mapping project was all about. The people who run the Gert Town Initiative are residents of the area who have taken action to make sure the district is re-built to the community's specifications to accomodate the residents' needs. The mapping project seeks to make that goal attainable by organizing and categorizing the parts of the district in most need of development while ensuring that the development the does occur compliments the unique aspects of Gert Town. In the end, Alyssa and I were successful in creating the database and documenting the destruction; However, it was the re-construction that made creating the database worthwhile.