A public inquiry · St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana
What have we developed past?
OverDevelopment asks what progress gives us, what it replaces and what it makes harder to do without it.
The boundary
This is not an argument for going backward.
Civilization has given people things worth keeping. The inquiry is about what those gains asked people to surrender—and what was worth keeping from before.
Read the current thinking →The local field
Land is not empty just because it has not been built on.
St. Tammany is where the larger question becomes concrete: subdivisions, filled wetlands, disappearing tree lines, long drives, food dependence, drainage problems and infrastructure that always seems to need one more lane.
These are not the whole project. They are visible examples of a larger pattern—more systems between people and the places, resources and relationships that sustain them.
Before we call land unused, ask what it does.
- 01 Holds water
- 02 Produces food
- 03 Shelters life
- 04 Cools the air
- 05 Connects people
- 06 Leaves options open
The work
Criticism is only half the job.
OverDevelopment observes, reports, questions, experiments and satirizes. These projects are different ways of investigating the same larger question.
Pelican Watch
What becomes possible when public records and local decisions are easier to find, examine and understand?
Visit Pelican Watch → Practical proposalEdible Commons
Can one shared landscape reconnect food, practical knowledge, land and ordinary community life?
Explore the idea → Financial experimentThe Shop
Can hyperlocal satire become a profitable business while eventually helping fund useful local work?
About the experiment →A STANDARD FOR GROWTH
Growth should make a place more capable, not merely more consumed.
Satire / The shop
Sometimes the shortest argument fits on a magnet.
I HEART TRAFFIC and PARKING > TREES say out loud what the built landscape often says for us. The joke is another way of making the argument.
Shop coming soon