Why read this column?
I cannot honestly answer that question, but I will say this, my first academic love in life was writing before architecture. If we take this journey together, we might find inspiration, even joy. I am convinced that regardless of the road that lies ahead for us, regardless of who is elected president, whether our taxes go up or down, or the Fed finally reduces interest rates, we must find joy. We need to ratchet down the noise and banter of the pundits, the news blogs, the social media streams, and find the thing that we can hold onto that speaks to our hearts and brings meaning into our lives.
For me, this means art, music, and culture. To spend a day wandering exhibits at an art gallery downtown or at the Seattle Asian Art Museum on Capitol Hill is a joy. Listening to the 1997 Remaster of “Life’s What You Make It” by Talk Talk for the thousandth time still takes me to a place where I am king of my own domain and no one else can tell me what to do. Going to the Pride celebration at the Seattle Center and just bathing in the energy, vibrant color, and eccentricity of the crowd brings me more happiness than I can put to words. We need arts, music, and culture. And we need each other.
I read an article a few weeks ago that suggested that to be happy we need three things:
I am going to come back around to this at the end of this article, but first I must talk about…
A day in the life. One of my wonderful staff told me that I should provide you all with insight into my life as a director. This resonated with me. So, in this column, I will try to take a step toward demystifying government, demystifying planning. I will start with one morning in my life, which begins with me lying in bed absorbing the morning news on my Apple phone - which I do every morning these days. The Seattle Times Morning Brief. The previous night’s Evening Brief. The Stranger. The New York Times. The Daily Skimm. CNN 5 Things. The Washington Post. I am looking for trends. In my new career as an appointed elected-adjacent public servant, I am leaning into the life of someone navigating politics instead of navigating design problems, constructability issues, and project proformas. I am trained as an architect, a systems thinker, but the problems we are trying to solve at the City of Seattle are microcosms of the problems happening across the entire nation, and for this there is no singular adequate training. In every large city: housing scarcity, homelessness, inadequate public safety, the slow recovery from COVID-19, we are all struggling. But there is hope. There are solutions to the problems that we face. If only we can accept the need to listen, to learn, and to innovate.
After the news, I move on to reading my copy of ‘Negotiating While Black’, by Damali Peterman, a highly regarded lawyer, mediator, negotiator, and educator out of New York City. This morning’s chapter is ‘Recovering from Unintended Offense: When We Don’t Mean What We Say.’ Every morning, I try to glean a little more insight into how to become a better communicator, negotiator, listener, and a better public servant. If I can understand more about my own implicit bias, as well as the ways in which we unintentionally create policies that lead to ‘othering’, I can do a better job at laying the foundation for all of us to create better environments, better communities, better neighborhoods for all.
Why the built environment matters. So, what can you expect from this column? Through my writing, you will get a glance inside the mind of a center-leaning, obsessive-compulsive, extroverted, eclectic, fiscally-conservative, tree hugging Democrat. I will convince you that the built environment matters, that it is the foundation for and, in many cases, the solution to a lot of our problems. I will share with you examples of how built environments create spaces that allow for, albeit encourage, meaningful social interaction and connections with others. We will look at how leaning into creation of and activation of beautiful public spaces and green spaces contributes to the health of individuals, families, and communities. I will describe how it is to be a public servant who believes that social justice can be advanced by creating meaningful places that people occupy, live, work, and play. We will investigate strategies for integrating sustainability into city planning. We will explore the future of transportation, policy frameworks for housing affordability and climate resilience, as well as the integration of smart city technologies and their impact on urban planning. We will lean into the question of what makes for meaningful community engagement in planning and how we build a more equitable city. And we will do all this with open minded curiosity and an eye to the future.
Wow. That was a lot. Thinking of the weight of it all, my heart feels a bit heavy. But as writing was my first love before architecture, this meaningful discourse doth also make my heart sing. This is going to be fun.
