It's been awhile since I've posted anything here. I applied to five graduate schools in urban design. I was accepted into..........ZERO schools of urban design! I guess this is where the dream ends. Apparently, there are simply much better candidates out there. Of course, a portion of the blame should be directed at the graduate schools themselves. Each of them stated that they accept people with a planning background, but when it comes down to actually admitting people into their programs, only architects and landscape architects are chosen.
What to do now? I've started the job search process for something new in western Washington. This time, I'm limiting my search to municipal governments that are within commuting distance of Tacoma. By commuting distance, I mean accessible by a short bike ride or a train or bus ride. No spending 4 hours a day in a car for me!
By moving away from Centralia and closer to Tacoma, I hope I can contribute to the urban design and planning discussions in new ways. Stay tuned...
1 comment:
Good luck with this.
I'm not sure what your intentions are with planning, but I've found that the more you see of the planning education people, the more they drag you down. They're wrong a lot of the time - dead wrong. They focus a lot on sort of the ephemeral aspects of sustainability without understanding or teaching the core relationships between land use and transportation or they focus on social aspects that are very contextualized and only have indirect analogs to... say Tacoma.
Reading Jane Jacobs and James Kunstler gives you a lot valuable perspective. Additionally, just studying the pre-automobile US and existing Europe gives you practically all of the tools any municipality needs to be vibrant, cohesive, and livable.
I think you also learn more by studying the planning documents that come out of the municipal governments that you'd consider working for and being a part of the public processes. I've tried that route and I know a lot of the processes, people, and ideas floating around.
They still won't hire me though.
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