It’s what makes us special…

Posted on | April 30, 2010 | No Comments

For this final blog post, I would like to give a little bit of my take on what gives us as urban designers a special ability to understand and influence the world around us.  This past year the master of urban design program at Ball State has opened my eyes to a number of issues, technologies, and concepts that have changed the way I approach the design of human environments.  As a student with a landscape architecture background, I already understood the value of place creation, and many of the techniques that go into it.  However, in the past for me the idea of creating place was primarily comprised of the physical attributes that comprise a place.  Don’t get me wrong, the physical design of a place is still very important and contributes to its character and function.  As an urban designer I have learned to appreciate the way in which we live and how we use our physical environment, because that is what truly makes a place successful.  Our work does not only involve the physical design of the world in which we live, but requires a comprehensive understanding of how our behavior, habits, political orientations, and economic structure have an impact on the places in which we work.  Just one example would be our incessant reliance upon the automobile.  People may blame a myriad of causes for the onset of this phenomenon; ranging from politics, oil companies, land use patterns, to suburbanization.  These things may contribute to the problem, but what matters is that urban designers acknowledge all of them when they approach a project.  The design of a place inversely affects the ways in which people must operate within them, and if the environment is no longer solely designed with the personal automobile in mind, it places the power of transformation in our hands.

On my commute to class in Indianapolis, I often times find myself lost in thought, analyzing every aspect of the built environment.  I can’t just look at the road, because I begin to wonder how wide are the lanes, how far apart are the trees spaced, how wide are the sidewalks, how far are the buildings setback, how tall are the buildings, what style is the architecture, what uses are in the buildings, how many windows do the buildings have, who lives in this neighborhood, how many people live in the neighborhood, and the list could go on for days.  Then I find myself contemplating what it would be like if I didn’t have the education that I do.  How would a ‘normal’ person perceive this environment?  In some instances it can take the fun out of an experience because I automatically know what the designer’s intent was, I cannot just simply ‘experience’ the place in the way that it was intended to be, while in the end I know it is a gift to be able to deconstruct the world in this way.  It is this gift that is going to allow my classmates and I to become true contributors to world in which we inhabit.  For if we have the ability to see beyond those things that inhibit the growth and development of vibrant and sustainable communities, then we will be able to shape the ways in which we live and function in the urban environment.

Our work on East Washington Street this year is one of the best examples of what this vision will allow us to accomplish as we enter into the professional world in a few months.  I was blown away by the diversity and quality of ideas presented at our final open space and transportation studio project jury on Thursday.  It was an incredible exercise to envision how various transit options such as light rail, bus rapid transit, shared bicycle programs, and personal transportation devices could transform this largely neglected industrial corridor into a densely populated mixed use community.  I believe my experience at Ball State has been invaluable in shaping me into the designer that I wish to be, one that looks at the world around him with a sense of awe and a desire to contribute to its function and vitality.  Not to mention the group of incredible people that I have come to know along the way.  It has truly been a pleasure to learn along side all of them and I’m sure they will go on to apply the very vision that I have spoken of within their own endeavors, as I know they share the same gift.

The culmination of this semester. My vision for East Washington Street and a transit oriented development at Keystone and East Washington.

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