One finger on the fence

I've been thinking about what was said on friday, and it occurred to me that there are things i've never said or explained:

Political Issue:
I started by picking as a political issue the rise in Venezuelan political exiles seeking asylum in the US, which related to the play and how everyone got banished and went into the forest... I kind of moved away from simply the political exiles, and thought about immigrants in general as exiles, in that they are people who are forced out of their land, whether it be for political, social, economic or religious reasons (even though i don't want to deal with religion).

Site:
Jackson Heights, Queens
There are a couple of reasons why i chose this site: The whole process in choosing the site started with me looking at all five boroughs in the city, and checking the ratio between foreign born (immigrant) population, and native (US) population. Queens had the highest percentage of foreign population (46.1%;49% of which were from Latin America) vs. native (53.9%) in the 2000, census. Queens was followed by Brooklyn (37.8% foreign), Manhattan (29.4%), Bronx (29%) and Staten Island (16.4%).
So, I felt it necessary to have the site in Queens.
After that I looked through a couple of Queens neighborhoods like Corona and Flushing, but came upon Jackson Heights and was intrigued by its history and current population.
Jackson Heights was born in 1917 as part of the Garden City Movement. It is the first and largest Garden City in the US. (Garden Cities are planned, self-contained communities surrounded by greenbelts, and containing carefully balanced areas of residences, industry, and agriculture) Jackson Heights is a middle class neighborhood, and one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the country. Most of its residents are immigrants (70%), mostly from Latin America, but also consisting of multi-generational Europeans (Italian, Jewish, Russian, Irish, Polish, etc) and Asians (Phillipines, India, Pakistan, Bengladesh, China, Korea). Little India is located around the 74 ST stop, while the Latin American community surrounds the 82 ST stop on the 7 train.
Also, it should be said that although it has the largest concentration of green spaces in the city, all the gardens in Jackson Heights are privately owned, and only those who have the key have access to the gardens located in between the buildings. The only public park in the neighborhood is Travers Park, which is paved, (except for a few trees that surround one side of it, and a couple of trees around the back, where the children's playground is). My site would be where Travers Park is now (the paved part, not the children's playground area), and probably not the whole park)
So, in a way Jackson Heights relates to the political issue (immigrants) and the joke (garden)

Site Model:
What I wanted to show in the site model was the hierarchy between paved space and green space within each block within the neighborhood. Where the paved space was more prevalent, it was made out of chipboard with green add-ons for the green spaces, and where the green spaces were more prevalent, it was made out of green mat board, with chipboard add-ons, for the paved spaces.

Program:
Here is where I have kind of been stuck. Although I think the idea of a greenhouse/community garden is a good one, that would only be a part of the program, and most likely only on the top or back of the building (most likely top). For the second part of the program I was thinking of a series of small, immigrant family-owned businesses lining the street (Although this wouldn't really be a program, rather than a space designated for these businesses; the reason for it being businesses instead of business is because of the shear size of the site, although i can simple reduce the size of the greenhouse and make one specific business). The greenhouse would be on top of these businesses, with public access through all of them, so that the greenhouse/community garden unites all of these immigrant families/ businesses and creates a community within an immigrant population, instead of an isolation (this relates to the play, in which all those who were banish from the dukedom found a community in the place which isolated them from there land(the forest).
Another idea that I had for the second program was a strip club, which directly relates to the joke. With this idea, i could have female strippers on one side of the building, and male strippers on the other, and play with the gender issue of the joke. However, i wouldn't know how to introduce the political issue into the strip club (other than having the strippers be the immigrants), and how it would interact with the greenhouse (yet, although i have an idea). I also don't know how i would introduce the gender issue within the first idea of the businesses, or if its even important at this stage, seeing that its from the joke.

That's it so far, although i know i hav a lot more thinking to do, any comments would be greatly appreciated, and would really help me.