Lawrence Alan Eyre (born

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

, 1930 – 3 June 2020) was a British-born Jamaican

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

and

environmentalist Environmentalism is a broad Philosophy of life, philosophy, ideology, and social movement about supporting life, habitats, and surroundings. While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of Green politics, g ...

. He was also a member of the

Christadelphian The Christadelphians () are a restorationist and nontrinitarian (Biblical Unitarian) Christian denomination. The name means 'brothers and sisters in Christ',"The Christadelphians, or brethren in Christ ... The very name 'Christadelphian' was co ...

church. Alan Eyre was co-founder of the Department of Geography of the

University of the West Indies The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 18 English-speaking countries and territories in t ...

Mona, Jamaica Mona is a neighbourhood in southeastern Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica, Saint Andrew Parish, approximately eight kilometres from Kingston, Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica. A former sugarcane Sugar plantations in the Caribbean, plantation, it is the sit ...

. His academic work has focused on the

political geography Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Conventionally, for the purposes of analysis, ...

shanty town A shanty town, squatter area, squatter settlement, or squatter camp is a settlement of improvised buildings known as shanties or shacks, typically made of materials such as mud and wood, or from cheap building materials such as corrugated iron s ...

s and the degradation of the

tropical rain forest Tropical rainforests are dense and warm rainforests with high rainfall typically found between 10° north and south of the Equator. They are a subset of the tropical forest biome that occurs roughly within the 28° latitudes (in the torrid zo ...

Work on shanty towns

In 1972 Eyre published one of the first Caribbean studies on

urban geography Urban geography is the subdiscipline of geography that derives from a study of cities and urban processes. Urban geographers and urbanists examine various aspects of urban life and the built environment. Scholars, activists, and the public have ...

, showing that the inner city

tenements A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...

and not the shanty town was the first destination of rural

migrants Migrant is a term that may refer to: Human migration *Human migration, including: **Emigration, leaving one's resident country with the intent to settle elsewhere. 1988 Webster's Definition. One who migrates, esp. from 1 region to another in sear ...

, then, when stable work is found and income saved, outward to the

peri-urban Peri-urbanisation relates to the processes of scattered and dispersive urban growth that create hybrid landscapes of fragmented and mixed urban and rural characteristics. Such areas may be referred to as the rural–urban fringe, the outskirts ...

shanty towns; and noting income variance in the shanty towns. Eyre was one of the first urban geographers in

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

Latin America Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...

n context to clearly document the inner-city/peri-urban shanty distinction. In a later study (1984) Eyre found evidence of both marginality and self-improvement in the Jamaican shanty towns. Eyre's work (1984, 1986) also documented party political violence as a component of peri-urban geography, hurricane housing (1989) and self-help housing (1997).

Rainforest preservation

In ''Slow death of a tropical rainforest: The Cockpit Country of Jamaica, West Indies'' (1994) Eyre proposed that the

Cockpit Country Cockpit Country is an area in Trelawny and Saint Elizabeth, Saint James, Saint Ann, Manchester and the northern tip of Clarendon parishes, mostly within the west-central side, of Jamaica. The land is marked by lush, montane forests and ste ...

, Jamaica's largest remaining contiguous rainforest be zoned a

World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

in the face of continuing encroachment and degradation, despite proposals for protection having originated as early as Cotterell (1979) and Aiken (1986). Eyre's study was one of the main academic starting points for a petition sponsored by the Cockpit Country Stakeholders' Group and Jamaica Environmental Advocacy Network which was submitted to Prime Minister

Bruce Golding Orette Bruce Golding (born 5 December 1947) is a former Jamaican politician who served as eighth Prime Minister of Jamaica from 11 September 2007 to 23 October 2011. He is a member of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), which he led from 2005 to ...

in 2006.

Academic publications

For a partial bibliography of Eyre's many papers on peri-urban geography see Robert B. Potter, Dennis Conway (eds), ''Self-Help Housing, the Poor, and the State in the Caribbean'',

University of Tennessee Press The University of Tennessee Press is a university press associated with the University of Tennessee. UT Press was established in 1940 by the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees. The University of Tennessee Press issues about 35 books each ...

, 1997, p. 101. * "Tidewater Shorelines in Broward and Palm Beach counties, Florida: an analysis of characteristics and changes interpreted from color, color-infrared and thermal aerial imagery" Remote Sensing and Interpretation Laboratory, 1971 * "Geographic Aspects of Population Dynamics in Jamaica" 1972 * "The June 12th, 1979 Flood Disaster in Jamaica: a satellite view" 1979 * "Deforestation in Jamaica", ''Journal of the Scientific Research Council of Jamaica'', Volume 6, Issue 2, Scientific Research Council of Jamaica, 1987 * "Slow Death of a Tropical Rainforest: The Cockpit Country of Jamaica, West Indies" 1994 * ''A New Geography of the Caribbean'' * ''Land and Population in the Sugar Belt of Jamaica'' * ''The Botanic Gardens of Jamaica'' * ''The Shanty Town'' * ''Quasi-Urban Melange Settlement'' * "An Investigation of Remote Sensing of Vacant and Unutilized Land in an Urbanized Coastal Area of Southeast Florida" * ''Tidewater Shorelines in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, Florida'' * ''Environment and Education'' * ''Tropical Forests as Seen From Space''

Religious publications

Eyre's religious publications primarily concern the Polish Brethren and other antecedents of

and

Biblical Unitarian Biblical unitarianism (otherwise capitalized as biblical Unitarianism, sometimes abbreviated as BU) is a Unitarian Christian tradition whose adherents affirm the Bible as their sole authority, and from it base their beliefs that God the Father i ...

views: * ''The Protesters'' * ''Brethren in Christ'' * ''At Last, True Christianity'' * ''Jakub Paleolog'' (i.e. the Greek Unitarian Jacobus Palaeologus) 1997, A Journal from the

Radical Reformation The Radical Reformation represented a response to perceived corruption both in the Catholic Church and in the expanding Magisterial Protestant movement led by Martin Luther and many others. Starting in Germany and Switzerland in the 16th cen ...

, Spring 1997, Vol. 6, No. 3L. Alan Eyre
/ref> * ''A Jamaican Love Story''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eyre, Alan 1930 births 2020 deaths Jamaican geographers Conservationists Jamaican academics Christadelphians Jamaican Christians British emigrants to Jamaica