What sparked your passion?
From Cyburbian Dilettante: Reading the treads in these forums, I could tell that lots of people are whole-heartedly devoted to what they do, especially when I read middle aged people deciding to make a career change and start grad school. I want to hear how your passion got ignited.
As for me, I am just at the beginning of my journey. Recently I’ve traveled to Hong Kong, I am astonished by their MTR. As a tourist it is almost impossible to get lost, and so easy to get to your destination; not only for tourist, but it’s also an integral part of the locals everyday commute. This might be because I’m an Angelino (we go every where by car, which I think is stupid…). But I think the design is just simply ingenious, thinking that I can be a part of designing this gets my heart racing. It’s so much more meaningful than my current job, where I just get to save a big corporation a few bucks here and there.
So what is your moment?
I am a fellow Angelino (Silverlake born and raised), and I love cities from taking trips with my grandparents. Once they retired, they decided to travel to every city in the country, and for their summer trips I joined them. I used to love looking at the skylines of all the different cities, and for a while I probably memorized most in the U.S. I was (and still am) and unabashed map nerd, and I grew up playing SimCity, and planning my own out of legos. It sounds corny, but I love how cities can become havens of creativity and change, and represent the hopes and dreams of all of us. Now if only planners were actually paid by the work they do to keep them together ...
I'm am still new to the planning world but I have been totally amazed by it. I grew up in La Mirada which is in the middle of La and Orange County. I am currently going up to school in Sonoma and am really looking foward to becoming a planner. I took an intro to planning class my sophmore year and it really interested me. I just feel like by being in this field will allow me to make a positive difference in peoples lives.
dilettante--that is really interesting about hong kong. amazing!
ive always loved cities; i love how they "work" and how you can feel like youre a part of something bigger. i studied architecture and i was always more interested in how places affect how a person behaves and feels. i decided to look into grad school when i went to a planning meeting with my boss (architect) and i just knew its where i wanted to be.
also i love maps..
and this is random but i think its going to stay with me for a long time: two weekends ago i went to SC to campaign for obama. we were sent into very rural areas that were so poor and desolate. i was shocked. i seriously did not know that level of poverty existed in america. ive told everyone about it, how just.....shocking! it was. im full of questions now about how a place like that happens and what can change.
::RANT ALERT::
Corncob - I was exactly the same way. And even until recently I thought I was the only one. Road trips were a dream for me. We went all over the Midwest and rust belt. I had all the skylines memorized. I remember as a kid driving around the bend in northern Kentucky and seeing the Cincinnati skyline framed by the surrounding hills and Ohio River. Spectacular! Columbus, Cleveland, Chicago, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis. In all these places I had the highways and exits memorized (and eventually for the rest of the US). I could tell you when the interstate when from two lanes to three and four, and each time we made another trip I was so worked up about seeing what had changed - I saw lots of highway projects through to completion in cities I didn't even live in. Useless but it just fascinated me. Even suburbs - I knew them and what they looked like - Aurora, Euclid, Orchard Pk (Buffalo), Marietta. I was always confounded why the highways there were so much wider than in center cities, until I realized that there was no room to expand. Little epiphanies like that - stuff I could have read in a book but found out after countless hours sitting in the back seat and pouring over maps. I always thought any city whose skyline was visible before we reached the outer ring of suburbs was a "small-time" city. Columbus was an example, Indianapolis, et al. Of course, it never occurred to me that this theory could say nothing about cities in hilly terrains. And maps, oh god don't get me going on maps. I had the highway layout of every city that got its own Rand McNally block imprinted in my head, and even now (15 years later) I scour through each new yearly addition of the RM atlas looking for completed by-passes, new exits, expanded airports and expanded city limit boundaries. I still keep an eye out for cities that "graduate" from the white-and-yellow representation of unbuilt vs. urban areas, to the colored block representations of each suburb, which RM seems to save for the biggest cities. If there were Google Earth when I was in high school, I never would have graduated. Now I have traveled so extensively that most US cities have lost their mystique for me even though I still find them very interesting, so several years ago I started studying up on street layouts of international cities (although there isn't a standard format like RM provides for identifying highways, interchanges, etc. City maps in world atlases are really just pathetic in general).
When I was a kid, I drafted out whole cities on grids with boulevards, parkways, plazas, rivers, lakes, etc. I also drew a ton of floor plans from houses to palaces to skycrapers to furniture. Didn't really understand how this three sided thing called a scale worked, but I thought it was a cool looking ruler.
I still fundamentally feel like a lot of site design and architecture over the past sixty years is a bunch of garbage (including some of the projects in the communities I work for). I think this is one of the main reasons why I am going back to school for landscape architecture, to right some of the wrongs.
However, I have learned that this can only be accomplished by learning how to get elected officials on my side (this is no easy task) and when to push the envelope, when to nudge it, and when not to do anything at all. I don't consider myself Machiavellian: I don't manipulate people. When I am in school, I hope I can get some on my classmates out of their ivory towers once in a while and help them understand that not all projects go as planned.
In a few ways, I share a "few" similarities with Heartland city boy, but I think I have learned when to pick my battles.;-)
I have always loved cities.I started out in the country with nothing better to do than play in a sandbox.Probably since like 4-5 years of age.As time went on me and some local friends became more effiecent @ designing cities of sand.People in the neighborhood would drive by and see a Sea of Large wood peices driven into the ground with a large 4 footer (with some kinda Black material wrapped around it.) in the middle.These were my skysrapers.We faced problems like the streets detiorating daily.Having to smoothe the sand down after school.Or just level it out and start again.My sand wasn't soft like beach sand it was mixed heavily with the famous VA red clay.Any way
My best friend at the time started modeling in his basement.I however didn't have the rescources to do this but I found SIMCITY for the Super nintendo.Lets just say
I get into # 4 heavily and is the perfect simulator for urban planners.Now I Design plans with a comprehension plan disc from my county,and I download sat images and do my visioning Next step is to go to school.I can't stop thinking about improving my stomping grounds of the Urban service areas of Augusta county Virginia.:)