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. . . you assume the buildings and
the small print roadways and
the cornered accidents
of roof and oozing tar and ordinary
concrete
zigzag. Well.
It is not beautiful.
It never was.
These are the shaven
private parts
the city show
of what somebody means
when he don't even bother
just to say
"I don't give a goddam"
(and)
"I hate you."
- Excerpt from the draft of the poem "Sweetwater Poem Number One"1
This essay examines the nexus between environmental and social justice as an intervention into the materiality of urban planning in a collaboration between two leading public intellectuals: June Jordan and R. Buckminster Fuller. Both interdisciplinary thinkers and civic environmentalists, they illustrate the concept that "environmental quality and economic and social health are mutually constitutive."2 1 shall situate their project "Skyrise for Harlem," an architectural redesign of Harlem that challenged many of the dominant practices of urban planning in the 1960s, within the paradigm of urban environmental justice, as theorized by Robert Bullard, Dorceta E. Taylor, Lawrence Buell, Joni Adamson, and others. Environment justice activists claim that where we live, work, play, and pray constitutes our environment, and that poor communities and communities of color have been burdened with disproportionate toxic exposures, as well as neglect and discrimination. Environmental jus tice became "one of the largest and most active social movements in the U.S ____ addressing the concerns of urbanités and people of color that had been overlooked by mainstream environmental organizations."3 As Dorceta E. Taylor explains, the movement is made up of thousands of grassroots environmental groups nationwide; prior to the emergence of the environmental justice movement, mainstream environmental organizations were mostly white and middle class.4 1 shall claim "Skyrise for Harlem" as an interrogation of design and affect as a significant intervention into critical environmental justice studies. I've coined the term architextural to emphasize architecture as text and text as thickly descriptive, multidimensional (a precomputer version of hypertext), serving as a scaffold on which to build a vision of hope and embodied environments. Jordan originally conceptualized this project as a "threshold" or gateway into new possibilities for Harlem - where she felt there had been "no threshold. In Harlem what does entrance mean? On one side of the door...