One Street At a Time (The Challenges of Civic Innovation)
They are defining us. The initial flashy appeal of designing the next cool gadget quickly evaporated for me during the first weeks of graduate school. While I enjoyed the creative process, I needed to find a more meaningful subject if I was going to secure any fulfillment from being a designer. Cities are amazing conglomerations of interconnected systems possessing hundreds of potential nodes of innovation. Infrastructure, transportation, governance, utilities, media, waste and all forms of commerce create a dynamic tapestry that shapes our daily experience, forges our identity, defines our future. The urban landscape is a remarkable, complex if not daunting canvas on which to work, full of opportunities and barriers. I’ve learned to love the process as much as the outcome, if not more. It is one thing to develop an exciting idea, quite another to implement it; failures far outnumber successes. For this innovator, however, there are few challenges more compelling to positively impact the future, our view of ourselves, and our place on this wondrous planet.
April’s Green Drinks kicks off a 6-month series on sustainable civic innovation. From transportation to food, we’ll explore the forces shaping our urban experience with this curious designer’s wry, and hopefully also insightful, commentary guiding the way.