The Nexus

Today, I read some words of a favorite artist Mako Fujimura that nearly brought me to tears. Over the past year or so, I've discerned a clear nexus between my once seemingly disparate interests: urban design.

Last month, I attended an urban design conference hosted by NC State's Design School that fueled the fire of this passion. I went to the conference thinking i'd be disappointed, that i'd built this subject up as the fabric of dreams, and thought my hopes would likely crash as soon as I turned on the jets. Instead, I found myself drawn into and brought alive by the conversations surrounding me that sunny afternoon in downtown Raleigh's beautiful new civic center. The talks ranged from transportation planning, which I thought would be a yawn but turned out quite interesting, to the psychology of place. While bright and chipper Lawrence Scarpa might have been a bit too much for me with his blazing designs for Southern CA rounding out hour seven of the conference, I was nevertheless deeply engaged with the conference material. I also found myself at ease in an environment with subject material that was fairly new to me, and yet somehow not at all new to me. It was as if I was stepping into a novel written for me without my knowledge. As I sat among a previously unknown demographic as someone with zero experience "in the field," so to say, I deeply connected with the conference topic-having flashbacks to 7th grade projects exploring how to redesign a dump for community use during the brownfield revitalization talks, or getting amped when Scarpa started talking about Riverwalk, an amazing public art exhibit in Providence, RI.

Why is urban design so appealing to me? It is a combination of my passion for arts and design and what I see as a clear gifting towards strategic planning and public policy. While many see my current work in the arts and culture space as a step away from my college education in politics and policy, I don't. Over the long haul, I see the two closely intertwined through work in city planning and city design. I want to live and breathe as a catalyst for shalom in the city, shalom in the slums, shalom in the broken ugly places that can be and one day will be redeemed.

Now back to my original discussion...At last month's planning conference I learned about an interesting initiative spearheaded by Charleston Mayor Joe Riley called The Mayor's Institute on City Design. As Riley says in the video posted on the initiative's site, "The future of our country, and it's success economically and culturally depends on our ability to build beautiful, livable, inspirational cities. That's what the Mayor's Institute of City Design is helping our country to do." (http://www.micd.org/about/index.htm)

Tonight, I opened up Mako's book Refractions to read words I overlooked initially when reading his blog, which held new meaning because of this urban planning event. I paid close attention because the words were already familiar: The Mayor's Institute on City Design. Why did this make me come close to tears tonight? Because I resonate so deeply with Mako's words-he and I are kindred souls and it's so encouraging to see an artist that I admire share a passion for one of my greatest passions: community development through the vehicle of cities.