This class examined social, design, political, and environmental factors that promote healthy urban neighborhoods and the integration of urban communities and ecological realities. I really liked the structure of the class. We started with an in class lecture to get a background, then we went to actually walk around the neighborhood, and then we heard different panelists discuss their work and relationship to the community. Hearing all of their stories was really informative and also inspiring. It really opened my eyes to community engagement in a way I hadn’t thought about before. I hadn’t thought of those sort of creative gatherings as ways to work towards change before.
I think that the thing I really appreciated the most was the activities in class where we either ranked concepts by importance or answered yes or no to questions. I didn’t actually expect to appreciate them as much as I did, partly because they were kinda hard for me to answer. But that was also part of why they were so good. It was very informative because of the discussions that resulted from all of our different answers. Someone would explain their view on one of the options and I would think their ideas sounded right or pretty convincing. But then the next person would go and bring up a different point that was just as valid. And the next person would do the same thing. And so on. They always said things I hadn’t thought about before, especially people who disagreed with what I had chosen. There were so many different perspectives and ideas.
Our two projects were to create Race and Social Justice Screens for two of the neighborhoods we studied. These screens judged the neighborhood based on criteria we created that related to race or social justice. The in class activities really allowed me to fully understand the complexity of neighborhood or city planning. They showed how important that kind of discussion is in order to get past misunderstandings and maybe see different points of view. There were definitely a few times when I actually changed my mind based on what my classmates argued because there were things I hadn’t considered that they had. Taking that idea to the scale of large government decisions, having as many discussions with as many people of different perspectives as possible is so helpful and so important.