Place, Community, Sustainability: Shifting Meanings of the Urban in Post-Maria Puerto Rico

Rebio Diaz Cardona (LaGuardia Community College)

For many residents of Puerto Rico, life is divided between a before and an after Maria, the category five hurricane that pummeled the island in September 2017. This is not surprising, as disasters are often experienced as life-changing. Many analysts, however, prefer to see hurricane Maria as only exacerbating and further exposing the already deteriorating state of the island’s infrastructural, financial, ecological, and political situation. The responses to the debacle, as documented by journalist Naomi Klein, seem to coalesce around two starkly different views for the island’s future, one based on massive privatization of public assets and efforts to make the island attractive for wealthy investors, and another centered around the goal of a sustainable future for the island residents, with increasing levels of local autonomy and self-management. A crucial challenge for the advocates of this second view is how to reduce fragmentation and achieve greater coordination among groups that operate mostly in parallel but have much in common in terms of goals and priorities. Drawing on interviews with a variety of stakeholders (community organizers, activists, academics, public officials, as well as design professionals), this presentation explores the ‘senses of place’ and the emerging spatialities of collaboration deployed by Puerto Rican grassroots organizations as they seek to create greater material and political common ground to tackle the challenges faced by the island as it navigates its second year of ‘life after Maria’.