3/18/13 – It’s “Bottom-up” not “Top-down”

Thoughts are a bit jumbled today…coming back from Spring Break. I’ll try to hone in and break them down though.

Today, I learned about being objective and finding clues as a prospective planner lacking from the outside in. Instead of coming into a circumstance as an “EXPERT”, I am simply an “OBSERVER”.

This helps better articulate ideas or observations instead of telling people what they should do or what they need to do.

I really learned a lot about finding clues to healing or repairing a place than simply “connecting the dots” or finding links in-between. Then we moved to learn more in-depth about finding ways to celebrate good places/things in the community. For instance, in Israel (as was the area of discussion after Stephen came back from his trip there) they have a diverse and unique set of agricultural crops and produce that they export but they don’t have any “farmer’s markets,” food cars, or produce stands. They could easily celebrate their amazing produce in such ways!

WHY NOT CELEBRATE THE SPECIALTIES IN AN AREA?

This can be applied anywhere, you just have to look for the clues. 

This question  -or- concept  -or- idea (whatever you ‘d like to call it) really makes me think of one of my projects I did between Fall ’11 and Spring ’12 in my Honors class, People & Place. Why? Because throughout the year we had to (in groups) find something within South Salt Lake that needed to be resolved, fixed, or (in these new found words) celebrated. We found out through our observations that South Salt Lake really lacked an “identity.” When I really think in more depth about this I realize that what we observed was that South Salt Lake didn’t have anything to CELEBRATE.

Eventually through our design project and proposal, part of our identification suggestion derived from our observation of the various “old school” building signs perpendicular to the street that stuck out and still had the “fancy” lights on them that lit up at night. Instead of getting rid of them why not celebrate them?

This idea really resonated with me today. 

How can I observe the places I live, eat, sleep, play, learn, and work and transform them in a way that celebrates that place?

I love it!

            New ideas to come.