Why Does It Have To Be A Wall?

Ah, American ingenuity!

The creative people of The Walt Disney Company’s theme parks, the Imagineers, put out a book that highlights the old joke —

Q. How many  Imagineers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. Does it have to be a lightbulb?

Now  submissions for building President Trump’s border wall are showing similar creativity.

According to Time magazine’s daily news briefing of April 12, 2017, some of the ideas being submitted are  outlandish, like a 100-foot trench filled with nuclear waste.  Others are artistic, like the group of Pittsburgh-based artists with a series of proposals that include a border wall made of pipe organs, a string of hammocks and a memorial to those who have died attempting to cross.  And at least one suggests a utopian vision of the border.

A group of 14 engineers, architects, ecologists, urban planners under the name of the MADE collective  submitted a plan that’s basically the opposite from a “big, beautiful wall”.

They propose a shared territory between the U.S. and Mexico that would allow the free transit of people and goods between the two countries.  A hyperloop — a type of mass transit that achieves super-fast speeds using low-pressure tubes — would stretch from San Diego/Tijuana, across the southwestern to the Texas/Mexico border to connect cities that would form a new nation named Otra.  The complete plan is on a detailed website with photos, an application for their high-tech ID system, and a Change.org petition.

They realize theirs is the longest of long shots.  But who knows? At least they’ve got people talking about alternatives.

Read the complete story at http://time.com/4732209/border-wall-hyperloop-proposal-made-collective/?xid=newsletter-brief .  The photo came from that site.

 

 

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