I was lured out of my self-imposed school bubble yesterday by the lure of Fresh Media, an incredible event organized by the Incredibles over at SaveOurNet.ca. The focus of the event was exploring personal expression — written, analog, digital, whatever — for progressive social change. Held at a hidden gem on Hastings Street across from an in-progress under-construction W2 Woodwards site, it was uncanny, diverse, and not at all what I expected. I was almost overwhelmed with the excitement of seeing old friends and were-they?-friends I hadn’t seen in small lifetimes, getting to introduce amazing, innovative people to teach other, and trying not to get swept up and away.
It couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. I find that I’m often most excited about my planning program when I am talking to people who are not in it: when I see how eager they are to share their thoughts, experiences and conversations with me about how the complex decisions they find themselves making; the tradeoffs they are forced to weigh; the sneaky things they are proud to cope with. Conversely, I find my excitement wanes when I am in the thick of the actual work: I struggle to stay awake skimming environmental assessment reports; I chafe at the seeming futility of the negotiation process at times; and don’t even get me started on how little I actually know about the practice of crafting builds for human habitation.
I figure, this comes with the bargain: no glory without the guts to apply and engage with the full machinery of making stuff work. This is the difference between just being an armchair planner and a real one: a stomach for the demands of baking rigor into the system. I give my ADHD trait too much free reign to actually be designing buildings.
Beth reminded me of a phrase I haven’t heard in a while: right livelihood. I’m not a technological determinist but I’ll admit allowing myself the occasional moment of getting carried away with the pretty-shiny. I see the work of many of the faculty here at the SCARP program to be, as we might expect from an academic institution, a highly moralistic standpoint. I read into their attitudes, their actions and their interests, a feeling that the state at which we find the world makes the idea of progress (including technological progress) laughable at best and distracting at worst. The high ground on which they stand permits only one right livelihood, and that lies in empowering and enabling others to save themselves as best they can. (These others are mostly everywhere-but-here at UBC, except a person finding themselves in such dire a circumstance comes to the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and freaks me out by asking for change for coffee at our hinterland campus.)
If I let myself breathe, I remember that it’s a difference of degrees. Working in transportation policy is profoundly about trying one’s best for the people who are here, and who can’t help but be anywhere but here, despite how markedly unpleasant it’s becoming. I saw a friend from high school yesterday who made Montreal her home right out of high school. Having numbed myself to the ridiculousness of Vancouver, I’ve forgotten that one can, as she described it, go into a mild panic over the price of cheese.
The question this program wants to answer is, “What is the role of an urban planner if we are post-progress?” even though we very clearly are not and likely won’t be until such a situation is hefted upon us. The question I want to answer (while in this program, but I’ll take it however I can get it), is, “How can the technologies we make meaningful impact and change in society, beyond mere entertainment, consumption, distraction and subjugation?” What I’m seeing right now is that there are strong traditions in planning — sometimes it’s innocent, and sometimes it’s flat-out ignorant — that thinks this work has absolutely nothing to do with communication technology. (I was well-warned in advance that this might drive me insane, so I only have myself to blame on this front.)
I think this manifests sometimes as a battle between designers of experience: urban designers and planners want people to engage with their meticulously and intricately-calculated spaces, made with conviviality, “eyes on the street” and people-watching in mind. Interaction designers and information architects want those same qualities, but in the ether of the online layer, as people rip, mix and burn the markers of their identities, screen to page, pen to pixel. The two get knitted together with trackers, sensors, geolocative goodness, cameras augmenting reality.
It’s always a struggle to surmount the false dichotomy. My ability to do what I love and create value for someone else lies 95% in my ability to demonstrate the value of what I love with the goals others are trying to achieve. There are plenty of others working this space — I’m flattered that some of them are starting to find me, even! — and now it is down to the task of taking what I see, and having it speak to what others need to hear.
