Montage of Dystopian Future by Sean McGadden
Land use and planning have a deep seated relationship to the public welfare in the ways that as legal institutions, the law of land use was first developed to protect the public from outside threat:
“I cannot count upon the enjoyment of that which I regard as mine, except through the promise of the law which guarantees it to me. It is law alone which permits me to forget my natural weakness. It is only through protection of law that I am able to enclose a field, and to give myself up to its cultivation with the sure though distant hope of harvest.”
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 1689
In order to truly execute this project I will need a huge network of support, both intellectual, emotional, but also logistically and undoubtedly financially. This project still needs years of actual experience to draw from. I need real world experience in practice in order to draw from and begin to question more critically.
I think this project can be driven by myself. Although, I will need help and resources, both physically and spiritually. Engaging with a broad stroke of ideas to draw real world solutions through writing can be more difficult even than perhaps an architecture project which allows its constraints to exist within a much smaller bounding box. This project holds a multitude of credible sources and requires the support and collaboration of a host of real world practitioners and academics. I think toward the improvement of a profession as a whole, it will be important to have discourse across the wealth of experts that exist and want to make things better collectively.
Covid has fundamentally impacted the construction industry almost not at all. I have been working in the field since the pandemic began and of all the jobs I sought during the initial economic and worldwide downturn following the onset of the pandemic, construction and the fields of architecture and other trades, to me, were hardly affected. It is true that many projects had to halt due to the fear of investors and the way the pandemic might impact potential returns, but in terms of contractors and systems designers who were getting drawings approved and laying pipes, I felt little to no effect during this pandemic. I think what the pandemic does offer is the potential for intense and focused renaissance of the profession. There are many opportunities for creative thinking and the willingness of both the public and future investors to assess risks will be greatly affected. This means that as a whole we must be tenacious in our pursuits of the most ideal architecture we can dream of. There is no better time to be an architect in the last hundred years than right now. The availability of new technology and the sentiment of our worldwide cultures are shifting. There is no doubt, with this shift, architects have a chance to occupy certain niches of innovation like never before.
COVID has exposed various precarious setbacks to development. However, in analyzing a project in the city of Boston I have found it to offer many opportunities as well. Despite many of the setbacks created by the economic downturn as well as the pandemic, the City of Boston Parks Department has set forth explicit plans and developments to upgrade and maintain many of the parks and green spaces around the Greater Boston Area. Regardless, this choice to maintain the importance of outdoor recreation amidst a host of problems has only reinforced the political directive of the Walsh administration to provide for its citizens well being. This decision is especially important during these trying times because people will still have the opportunity to find reprieve in any number of outdoor spaces when they have been, for the most part, relegated to working from home and remaining socially distanced from those around them. Many people must even refrain from seeing elderly loved ones for fear of infecting them. We, as a society, have encountered a distinct shift in cultural and social interaction where people are increasingly separated and polarized. In a time when social distancing is placed in the highest regard, renovating the public open spaces has reestablished the importance of gathering and allowing for people to witness and take part in a multitude of social activities. Additionally, the timing of these development projects has set a standard for other urban environments and political adminstations that can be widely beneficial as a precedent for the importance of green spaces in urban areas. As we experience a global pandemic, racial tensions and political polarization, it can sometimes be remiss that we are also in the midst of a global environmental crisis that has been ongoing. With this in mind it is truly wonderful that the City of Boston Parks Department has continued to pursue environmental and ecological sustainability by continuing to establish green spaces in highly populated urban areas. Nearly 70% of all carbon emissions and air pollutants worldwide come from buildings. This figure is dizzying and the fact that Marty Walsh seeks to offset these numbers with the development of more and more green spaces across the city speaks to the urgency and importance with which these spaces hold throughout Boston. On both large and small scales of firms, governments and various entities, the opportunities that COVID presents are greater than the setbacks.
Covid has allowed me to exist in a place of both introspection and reflection. I have a feeling others might have been able to more deeply understand themselves and the world around them better. With this collective intensity of thought I think there exist many kinds of changes and creative pursuits that can be combined and collaborated together as people urge for more and more collective interaction as we see the pandemic wane (hopefully?). The pursuit of knowledge in this field is of highest priority to me, regardless if that knowledge comes from practice or research IO think covid has brought some realities of existing in a first world country t the forefront of many peoples lives, the gratitude I feel daily for the excess that surrounds me and the love that runs through me, make me hopeful for what kind of career pursuits i might endeavor to engage with. Ultimately this project is a selfish one, where I can learn as much as I can about all the ways we and I can be better at everything.
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