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Property Wars

Property Wars is an afrofuturist narrative based on magical realism. It tells the story of Harlem’s inception, and how race, real estate, and magic played roles in the evolution of the area. The story concluded with the Black Magic Collective constructing hybrid tree structures occupied by humans, magical, and natural creatures, alike. They built 7 new tree-homes, on top of existing low-rise commercial buildings and parking lots in Lenox Terrace. Each unit in these new buildings was sold directly to low and middle-income black and brown residents, producing a system of collective ownership with the aid of government loans and Black Magic investors. These new buildings included floating dragon lairs buoyed by anti-gravitational enchantments. These towers incorporated magically produced material strategies that allowed the living and organic plant-based matter to serve as construction elements. Human units were made with soil-based bricks, which depended on the living mycelium-based micro-ecosystems within them for structure. Open, non-exclusive space produced a hybrid environment in which people, plants, and beasts coexisted on the terraces of these magically molded tree-homes. Black Magic’s development revitalized a stagnant construction economy in Harlem, employing and educating dark magicians on the manipulation of these new enchanted ecological materials.
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