Every Block Needs a Cemetery

COBBS CREEK

Every Block Needs a Cemetery brings a memorial space into the scale and regularity of a neighborhood block. In this reimagined city, each block has a plot dedicated to mausoleums (which houses caskets) or a columbarium (which houses urns), to integrate grief into our daily lives, and decentralize it for us all to bear equally. This may fall into place where a blocks already often have an empty lot or abandoned building. The block cemetery can also function as a hyperlocal park and a place to have neighborhood meetings. This panel is honoring the taking of space that grief requires. Like pouring one out or like leaving a table setting for a deceased loved one.

The 1985 bombing of the MOVE residence in Cobbs Creek still stings. The fact that the most prominent university in our city was secretly hoarding and using the bones of those murdered in the bombing, including children, well into the 21st century, stings. Maybe if we, meaning every single person living here regardless of race or background, were to reckon daily with the reaching roots of grief in this nation, our imaginings of each other can shift.