Act Boldly and Think Deeply: a New Book by David Twiggs

Through my work at Hot Springs Village, the largest gated community in North America, it has been my privilege to work with David on many placemaking projects . I believe ideas are just as important as actions and I consider this book project to be a highlight of our working together.

Destination Community: The Evolution of Travel, Tourism, Leisure, and Community

David has over 20 years of community development and management experience. I admire David's tremendous passion for land, and the nature and transformation of human communities in rural settings.  He also nurtures his own original and deep thoughts while he spends time, lots of time, in the field. This book is a documentation of his years of work developing improvements for tourism destination communities.  Although this book was completed during David's time at Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, it is not about specific projects in any one community; but rather, it focuses on the sociological and philosophical side of overall community development: land-use planning, the cultivation of sense of community and running a community as a business. After reading this book, one can readily apply the ideas and concepts presented here in communities anywhere.  Those ideas and concepts include:

• Monoculture vs. Sub-culture,
• Handcraft tourism,
• Sense of belonging at Destination Community,
• In-migration, 
• Startups in communities, and so on.
• If you are interested in real estate development, community management, urban planning, sociology, and value theory, combined with real-world experience, this is a book that you should not miss.

I sincerely hope you enjoy it, and I know you will.

New Urbanism, yes or no?

I have been secretly skeptical about trends, for example "New Urbanism." Yes, New Urbanism has been working out very successfully at many places. But when we invent a new terminology to define a trend, and repeat it over and over, we are likely to do ourselves a disservice. Because we may have created a "box" for confined thinking.

I am big fan of "form follows function." What are the "functions"? I think, for a community, it involves economic feasibility, social prosperity and stability, ecological sustainability, and cultural nurturing and preservation. New Urbanism, yes or no? Maybe. It could be one of the candidates, along with all the other nameless options to make it work.

The following is the best statement that I have read in a long time - it touched my heart, to be honest. Dr. Phillip Tabb mentioned at the end of his paper "Unity at the edge: constellation sustainable urbanism" that a planning official, Kerry Blind, made a comment on Serenbe Community,

"The development plan is not really New Urbanism; it is more organic. We are not saying what a structure looks like, but how it fits into the whole."

Author's notes on Dr. Tabb's paper

New Urbanism or not? As long as it functions beautifully, it does not matter. To quote what my boss, David Twggis,

"Why copy other people's formula? Be creative!"

I completely agree: it's time to let go of the terminology and stereotype thinking; observe, think and be creative.

"Flow" on both sides of brain: drawing and design vs. handling GIS data

I remember the nights I suddenly woke up in a dream about new thoughts on hand-drawing and illustration techniques. For example, it could be about how to use markers to draw the dry, stiff, cold and rough texture of the surface of a mountain rock. I recall my excitement over this sudden burst of realization about something that is subtle, abstract and even personal about graphic art. To be honest, I would even pull out my sketchbook to journal and document my thoughts, even though they may look silly when I become wide awake the next morning.

These days, what is on my mind are numbers; precisely, GIS data. I wake up in the middle of the night to a realization on how I can sort out data with a new tool command, imagining that through several steps back and forth, it will solve my inquiry that has been puzzling me for days (by the way, I do like instant gratification about being able to solve problems quickly. It doen't always happen though).

Graphic solution and data base solution are different.

Graphic solution (2d or 3d design, architecture, free-hand rendering, urban design): is dynamic, romantic, and one can pursue perfection to the end of the world, no matter you are the artist or a viewer. I love everything about the stimulation it brings to me when I work on a graphic solution, or even simply looking at a good piece of art.

Database solution (I can't say about every database, because I don't know. But I can say this about GIS data): is linear, highly fact/data centric, leaving no room for imagination and estimation. It is also purely problem-solving driven, utilizing hundreds of tools from the software tool box. Every bit of information in the attribute table is the very heart of the database. Data consistency and accuracy decides if the data is usable or useless.

Author's graphic journal.

I found great joy in working with both. That is one thing I love about working long hours and digging deep: the creativity builds the complexity of human mind, and it brings "flow" experience. If you are not already familiar with the concept of "flow", it is the experience when we are completely absorbed in an activity voluntarily. This experience makes us feel great joy, satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment, and we become unconscious about how much time has passed and how people are looking at us.

I believe people and responsibilities are sent to my way for a reason, a good one. For me, being used to graphic thinking and suddenly start working with hundreds and thousands of numbers in GIS database is hard, initially. It can be tedious, exhausting and demanding for uninterrupted stream of thoughts, when I am not very good at it. However, as I get over the learning curve, it is when I start to smell the goodness of a different way of thinking.

I value personal growth along with my professional growth and working with others as a team. I am grateful that I have the opportunity to strengthen both sides of my brain as I work on different job responsibilities.

Two sides of the brain. (Source: online)

One good thing about GIS database is that, it all in the end can be presented on a map, which is a form of visual expression. Oh, it all comes to a full circle. 

Building Community: Market-driven or Social-driven (part II)

If we community makers are considered the experts in this field, I'd like to make an analogy about the difference between "market-driven" and "social-driven."  We community makers are the parents and our users are the kids (reason being we are supposedly know more about this field than the laypeople):

Market-driven: how to make the kids happy,
Social-driven: what is good for the kids' future.

If you were a parent (or not a parent), you would know making a child happy and teaching the child what is good for them in the long run are both important. What is considered the most important is to keep the child happy while growing in a healthy manner - this is the definition of sustainable development: meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Market-driven vs. Social-driven = "Pop music" vs. "Classic music". Pop music is time-specific, while classical music is timeless. A market-driven community studies what is current, and then react what people need right now as quickly as possible, therefore these communities tend to be proven profitable in a short period of time. A social-driven consideration weighs more about the underlying factors that will make a community prosper for the longer term. These strategies may not make a community take off financially instantaneously, but is more likely to standout for its long life cycle. Jane Jacobs and Kevin Lynche's works are both from half a century ago and are still considered classic literature today.  This is because their advanced ways of thinking were driven by social concerns.

Market-driven vs. Social-driven = "fish" vs. "to fish". To give a man a fish or teach him how to fish? Similar to the music analogy, by giving fish, we rescue people from immediate starvation, while teach them how to fish is to pass on a life skill. More to it is that, by learning how to fish, we learn to ask "why" and "how", which train critical thinking. By being socially concerned about people, we ask what works for people, and why? And how to make it better? If we are simply market-driven, we can simply repeat the trend, or copy a "formula" that has worked somewhere else. For example, the cities in China are historically built organically over a long period of time, guided by Feng-shui and other rituals and philosophical beliefs as well as human usage.  However, what can be seen in many newly built towns or sections of older cities, the fine-grained urban texture are being destroyed, replaced with automobile oriented and strictly zoned urban lands, which can be largely seen (but slowly abandoned) in the North America. The driving force to this revolutionary change of city image and urban lifestyle is market-driven: the Chinese people want to live a western life-style, which gives them a sense. Maybe this is over simplified, but this is a big part of the story. My personal concern for this example is we need to ask "why" and "how" before we make drastic changes. If we do, we need to think long term what is good for the people and community.

Market-driven vs. Social-driven = "Objective" vs. "Subjective". When an expert is looking at the market, they then to think in terms of numbers, or return on investments. A market study is more like studying other people's story. On the contrary, social driven is for ourselves to relate: if we were to choose a community, how do we want to make the decision for ourselves and our children and grandchildren? The social thinking is actually very personable, culturally concerned and intuitive.

From each point or analogy here, there is not one option, which is better than the other one. I think both market-thinking and socially-thinking are important for us to embrace, if we are truly passionate about making successful communities for people and want to bring sustainable growth to these communities.

Building Community: Market-driven or Social-driven (part I)

I invested a few hours to read through a carefully and professionally executed market study for Hot Springs Village. It was an educational experience for me, in terms of both the great depth and range of consideration for the future of our community. This document is extremely informative and convincing.

On the other hand, while I completely see the value of trusting a well-conducted market study, I also see how important is it to think outside of the box, and detach from the dictation from market trends. By this, I mean, to see building a community from a "social" point of view. To be clear, the fuzzy word here "social", or in a more abstract word "sociology", means to sit back and look at people, embrace culture, and use logic and common sense (even feelings) to figure out how to make communities. In the end a community, for our users, is somewhere we want people to have fond memories of or even call home.

In this article (divided into two parts), I'd like to present some of my humble observation and thoughts on market-driven and social-driven in terms of making communities, no matter it is in rural or urban setting. Here "market-driven" I mean "real-estate value driven", while "social-driven" is "to let community naturally grow and involve over time, and give planning guidance from sociological (including political) point of view."

Maybe it's because I didn't grow up in a Capitalist culture and society, maybe it's because I appreciate living in cities that are thousand years old, maybe it's because of my academic  trained thinking through social and historical lens, I am skeptical about becoming Extreme Market-Driven (EMD) when it comes down to making communities. I illustrated a few differences between extreme market-driven and a healthy dose of social driven.

1. For the extreme market-driven, immediate economic return is the highest priority. When we add a healthy dose of social-driven thinking, we understand there's beauty in letting the community grow and build on itself over time. Let the social groups figure each other out through functions and conflicts, and eventually a unique and complex local culture will form and blossom. When a strong sense of belonging and stability is established, the community is mature and livable. This kind of community holds social and economic value for longer term.

2. When we are extremely market driven, we "implant" a project without taking care of the boarder. You must be familiar with this sight: car dealership scattered along a highway, and they seem lonely and absurd. The reason that these car dealerships have become the eyesore along the highway is because it's appearance is harsh and out of context - there's no transition between the project site and the surroundings, socially or visually. When we only care about the economic return of our own project, we lose sight of the context - the social texture and spatial configuration of the city or region that we are in. A wise architect once advised that if you want to see if an architecture is well-designed, then you need to see how it handles its corners. Likewise, when we want to build a healthy community or urban planning project, we need to consider how it fits in or even socially positively influence the dynamic of the area - we need to carefully design the boarder where the new meets the old. 

3. When we are extremely market-driven, we copy other people's successful formulas, and give up being creative and original. There is no need to say more, when we are so afraid to fail, we hold on extremely tight to what have worked for other people. We forget to learn about own place and people, or to invent what we like and will solely work for own needs. When we learn from successful real estate cases, we need to look further than just the economic return. Instead, we ought to dig deeper to think more critically: is this genuinely a well thought-out project and gives great contribution to the society, or is it a quick fix that will wither after a couple of decades, as oppose to those that will last for generations and hundreds of years.

My Take-away from 2014 Fall National Town Builders Association Conference

From October 24 to 26th 2014, I attended the National Town Builders Association conference for the first time. I was very glad to be there. I was able to meet experts and successful professionals in the town building and development field. I am also grateful for the opportunity to be exposed to the conversations and the ways of thinking that are different from my background in terms of viewing community building. I have been trained to think from the sociological function and aesthetic point of view. The peers at the conference presented their knowledge, insights and experience in real estate investment, political implementation, team building, and so on.

I have been to and presented at several national academic conferences. And now I am thrilled to have the opportunity to listen and learn from the other side of the story: the professionals and practitioners. Academia is a great environment to extract theories from experiments or consider a specialized field in an "ideal" environment. On the flip side, the professionals are the practitioners, who view things realistically and make things happen. They put budget and a strong team together, and conquer obstacles along the way. Each side, academic or professional, has its pros and cons.

Academic Visionary Thinking vs.
Professional Puzzle-solving Thinking
(graphic by author)

It was a great opportunity to learn from this group of experts and professionals. I am also excited to continue working on the project at Hot Springs Village with our own Placemaking team members, and those who will join and assist us in the future.

Group Picture of Fall 2014 National Town Builders Association Conference

What Community Do We Need, "When Everyone is Gone to the Moon"?

Streets full of people, all alone

Roads full of houses, never home

A church full of singing, out of tune

Everyone's gone to the moon

Eyes full of sorrow, never wet

Hands full of money, all in debt

Sun coming out in the middle of June

Everyone's gone to the moon

- from Nina Simone's "Everyone's gone to the Moon", originally by Johnathan King

Two things triggered me to ponder on this topic this couple of days,

1. My husband told me that Apple is going to release the new ipad today. (Whether if it is real, I don't know, and it's irrelevant.)
2. I listened to Nina Simone's "Everyone's gone to the Moon" this morning on my walk, and replayed it over and over. The song was written by Johnathan King in 1965, but it feels so intimately familiar to me 50 years later.

A subway station in Tokyo (by Michelle Li)

Young people at a dinning table (source online, author unknown)

One truth to be admitted: The internet world is here, the internet generation is here, and the internet lifestyle is here. I personally is someone who is resistant of change - I resist the dependency on the internet, and yet, I have several social network memberships. The sociology part of me tells me not to judge. Any kind of social change should be put into perspective and evaluated in a natural, objective and validating manner. Therefore, here I am, thinking about this question:

When people are dedicated in bonding virtually online, what should a traditional community do?

I live this new information network lifestyle: reaching out to my cellphone to check my social networks is one of the first three things I do when I wake up in the morning (text message included), sharing pictures of special "moments" with my social network is the first thing comes to my mind when they occur, texting my husband from another room when I want to be funny or feel too lazy to talk. I don't watch news on TV, I do not hand-write letters, and I do not feel sad about not having blood family member in this country (well, sometimes I do feel sad about that). I do not care if I get to know my neighbors, as long as there is internet connection in my place. Online, I belong to communities; well, on earth, I live in a community, but I know no one.

Social network diagram (source online, author unknown)

I start to think today, how would this social change affect our profession, when people are mostly physically present and mentally absence? What is, and where is our reality any more? How much does it matter, when we try to make our neighborhoods nice, or recreate car-free community, if people are not going to enjoy wholeheartedly? What is our attitude towards this social and lifestyle change, critical, resistant, ignoring or the opposite? From a utilitarian point of view, what is the most efficient way to build our community in the information era?

This should be an interdisciplinary conversation, and it requires us to be open-minded and forward thinking. I propose a few scenarios that perhaps will evoke further thinking along this line, just as they do to myself. I also believe, in this topic, questions are more important than the answers.

Is virtual community a brand new invention in our times?
Is the virtue community networking new and unique to the current times, or historically, people engage in social communities in a similar fashion, but in a different way? I assume the internet technology makes it easier to access this virtual type of bonding, so more people are able to do it.

Is "living in the cloud" constructive or destructive?
You will ask, in what sense? We can think about in any sense. But what concerns the most to our profession as community making is the sociology sense: is people being mentally occupied constructive or destructive to the conventional sense of social bond (face-to-face interaction), sense of family and community, and sense of place? Is there a new born or alternative social bonding mechanism that we community makers should be aware of, to make our products work for the future?

What does "living in the moment" mean anymore?
Where is what people see as the reality, at home, in the neighborhood, online, in the newspaper, hourly updated facebook status? People adopt their social identity through their perception of reality. The rise of social network certainly change people's way of thinking, perceiving, behavior and lifestyle. As people are prone to be drawn by sensual pleasures (pleasure of sense from what we see, hear, smell, eat, etc.) and instant gratification, it takes certain kind of audience for our delicately designed community for it to be appreciated. This certain kind of audience are those who are conscious about the physical environment, face-to-face human interactions, authentic experience, and deeper sense of being that does not come instantly (meaningful relationships, sense of community, and contribution to feel belong, etc.).

Lower level "on the earth", and higher level "on the cloud"?
To the younger generation, who grow up in the electronic technology world, are trained to have, at least part of, their sense of belonging online/remotely/virtually. It brings the question, do people compartmentalize where do they meet their needs on different hierarchical levels, according to Maslow's five hierarchies of human needs? Does a traditional neighborhood serve as a bedroom community where people takes care their basic level of needs, and find their sense of individualism and highly personalized belonging online?

Maslow's five hierarchies of human needs.

How much does geography factors matter any more?

World wide internet and advanced speedy transportation makes globalization possible, which continue to shape our new life in the liquid modern times (according to Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish Sociologist, we have moved away from a 'heavy' and 'solid', hardware-focused modernity to a 'light' and 'liquid', software-based modernity. See his book "Liquid Modernity", 2003). How much does geography matter any more? We would say for certain life tasks it has become irrelevant, but for some activities, we still need to do in person and we need geographic proximate. But the border between the two keeps moving towards the direction of geographic distance matters less and less as people are able to take care of things online more and more. For example, we thought we need to go out to meet someone. Guess what? We date online and get married. In our community, do we still need shopping center, when we can buy everything online? Do we care if we live close to work, since we can work from home? Do we care if our favorite restaurants are in our community, if there's Chef Shuttle? It sounds like Nike's motto "Nothing is Impossible!" However, if we settle down for a second and think, what is good for us may not be what we can do (by stretching our abilities), but what is good to our well-being. Granted, we can finish a challenge of "stay in your apartment alone for one month," but is that truly good for you? I propose that making livable community is not about becoming cutting edge and meet people's unsettled needs and trends, but we should truly care about the well-being of the people. In some sense, we guide people how to live life.

Chef Shuttle in Central Arkansas

Where are you? 
What is your lifestyle today, pro-technology or anti-technology, or not very conscious about it? How do you see yourself will be living 30 years from now? How do you see your children or grandchildren live their life when they are at your age? And how do you hope they live?



The "virtual living" era is here. Which part of it is just a trend and will eventually reverse to "normal", and which part is a true social change that we community makers should be aware of and do some advanced thinking? Let's talk.

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