Grow yourself with a place

Urban planning or placemaking, is our profession. To some people, it simply means work: go to meetings and conferences, draft documents or drawings at the computer, travel and see places, get paycheck and repeat year after year.

It is a good way to spend your life in your career. However, I propose, if this is something we enjoy to do, we can find a more delicate way to enjoy this experience.

Recently, I was given the privilege to work on a community building book with my supervisor and colleague David Twiggs. My part in the book is to add illustrations to David's narrative, and write about community from a sociology perspective. A lot of thinking, reflecting, learning and relearning was done in this process: in order to come up with diagrams and charts, I needed to thoroughly understand what is written and synchronize with the energy between the lines; in order to see from a social perspective, I needed to refamiliar myself with sociology theories and find the relation with the context of the book. My biggest enjoyment from the experience is that I was inspired to see myself as part of the communities, as oppose to someone that critiques, judges and then walks away. I am aware that this is because of my sociology background, which taught me that the society is a people's world, building community is to work with people, things happen with certain social background and carry certain time-specific social values, and I am not immune from any of these factors. As a result, my compassion grew towards people, the community and my profession. It has been a growing experience for me.

My point is, no matter what your perspective is, try and dig deeper.

Photo by author