Lawrence Alan Eyre (born

Leeds Leeds () is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the thi ...

, 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 An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that s ...

. He was also a member of the

Christadelphian The Christadelphians () or Christadelphianism are a restorationist and millenarian Christian group who hold a view of biblical unitarianism. There are approximately 50,000 Christadelphians in around 120 countries. The movement developed in th ...

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 17 English-speaking countries and territories in t ...

Mona, Jamaica Mona is a neighbourhood in southeastern Saint Andrew Parish, approximately eight kilometres from Kingston, Jamaica. A former sugarcane plantation, it is the site of a reservoir serving the city of Kingston and the main campus of the University ...

. His academic work has focused on the

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

of shanty towns and the degradation of the

tropical rain forest Tropical rainforests are rainforests that occur in areas of tropical rainforest climate in which there is no dry season – all months have an average precipitation of at least 60 mm – and may also be referred to as ''lowland equatori ...

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 may refer to: Human migration *Human migration *Emigration, leaving one's resident country with the intent to settle elsewhere *Immigration, movement into a country with the intent to settle * Economic migrant, someone who emigrates from o ...

, 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. Origin The expression originates from the French word ' ("peri-urban" ...

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

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...

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 in Jamaica. The land is marked by steep-sided hollows, as much as deep in places, which are separated b ...

, Jamaica's largest remaining contiguous rainforest be zoned a

World Heritage Site A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...

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 h ...

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, 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 The Polish Brethren (Polish: ''Bracia Polscy'') were members of the Minor Reformed Church of Poland, a Nontrinitarian Protestant church that existed in Poland from 1565 to 1658. By those on the outside, they were called "Arians" or " Socinians" (, ...

and other antecedents of

and

Biblical Unitarian Biblical unitarianism (also capitalized as biblical Unitarianism, BU) encompasses the key doctrines of nontrinitarian Christians who affirm the Bible as their sole authority, and from it base their beliefs that God the Father is one singular bein ...

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, 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