brandtheLAND

  For many of us, we believe memory works like that of a film or picture book - recalled to mind on demand, in vivid color, and uniquely total. I prefer to think of memory as the collection of lines, planes, forms, and colors that somehow influenced or were influenced by an emotion within us. Our memories are no more based in realism than the painting above, yet we recall the elements individually that compose the whole. In many ways, memory is idealized, as it never captures the entirety, but we still establish our own associations to places. It is the connection and progression of these associations that manifest our identity and morality. We are the sum of our manufactured and imperfect parts.   

There are very few communities, particularly in small town America, with stronger community ties than Corinth, Mississippi. What began as part of a site visit for a design class ended with deep southern hospitality, great food, good company, and a pride for the hard work that built these towns - much of which was not designed, but rather developed through generations of families. When the mayor of a town will meet you at the local Coca-Cola museum for floats, I begin to question whether people aren't the key to planning communities. 

 In our second class of Community Based Planning, we watched a documentary of John Brinckerhoff Jackson's philosophies and more so observations of small towns across America (hence the title of this block post). Throughout, he poses some interesting questions and unique viewpoints on landscape's role in his modern society.  Familiarity in the landscape...Jackson mentions the need for familiarity in the landscape, or rather that places with a sense of familiarity are inherently more welcoming, and I find at least partial validity to his point. The unfamiliar is terrifying and uncomfortable, but the familiar provides assurances of safety, and by nature we are driven and attracted to the familiar.  Jackson asks the question..."does it [landscape] begin to satisfy the immediate daily needs of the people that live there?" That point is, I believe, at the heart of real professional landscape architecture practice. In school, we are taught to think of meanings, theories, phi...

      People move...whether by desire, requirement, gentrification, money, family, job opportunities. People move, and there's really no good way to predict what will happen next. I believe the technoburb is among one of the most popular ways of life, alongside urban city life and suburbia, but I do not think it is the future of human development - particularly as the older generations begin to fade out for the younger. More young people are moving to big cities again, at exponential rates (myself included). Fewer young people desire children and families, so they pursue career and financial success first and foremost - most of which still happens at urban cores, particularly for higher office jobs. Small, local towns are barely hanging on by their bootstraps to avoid extinction, yet cannot agree on whether to maintain the old ways of life or push forward into contemporary lifestyles. It is true that many large corporations are moving away from urban environments for chea...

       While thinking about "Levittown and America," I'm plagued with a curiosity of how communities originate without third-party force? Often time, particularly in contemporary design, we see community as a sort of goal or a marker of success. "I have created a wonderful, healthy community; therefore, my masterplan is a success," but how much of that is the role of the design? I'm reminded of all the communities I consider myself a part of - from my childhood neighborhood to collections of artists and design organizations. Arguably even my workplace is a community of like-minded individuals in a grand collaboration for the success of the firm. Can communities be designed? Or does it simply require the shared interests and goals that link us together as humans? The desire for unity, acceptance, understanding, and support so that we all feel a little less secluded in the world? What happens when someone cannot or does not wish to partake in any community? Is...