After a month and half of classes at EFI, I think it’s about time that I start thinking about what I’ve learned in my first two intensive classes and the takeaways these lessons have given me to consider as I continue to think about what I’d like to research about

First up is Envisioning Sustainable Lands and Cities. This class proved to be a learning experience in a number of ways. Firstly, I think I learned a lot about the context of sustainability. One specific tidbit that I still remember was when it was said that sustainability and resilience as goals are often oppositional–sustainability looks to minimize inputs into society, whereas resilience entails creating redundancies so that society can cope with environmental changes. I also felt that the insights into things like local place plans and sustainability plans were really interesting and could inform my project, such as potentially writing a local place plan for a location with the feedback and insight of local residents. On the topic of local input, this was also a component of this class I learned a lot about. Community Trusts weren’t a concept I was familiar with before this class, but learning about them helped inform me more on what community-led initiatives could look like. Likewise, the discussions we had on how to get community input that’s representative of a community rather than those with the time and money to participate was valuable.

Next was Regenerating Place, which I felt like I really got a lot out of. Firstly, the idea of being messy was very new to me, and something that my group struggled with during this class, but also something that I think I want to think about going further, even in this blog–getting all my ideas together and curating them to bring together the “answer”, for what I would like to research and work on. Furthermore, this class was my first exposure to design tools like Sketchup, and I definitely would like to think about exploring that in some capacity when working on my research during the summer. I also learned a lot in terms of just theory and knowledge when it came to placemaking, urban design, and the impacts of planning.

I do think one thing that I started thinking about as an interaction between these two classes was the reading from Envisioning Sustainable Lands and Cities, “Shaking Up the City” by Tom Slater. In the book, he heavily critiques placemaking as a study that ignores sociopolitical/socioeconomic issues to focus on design as a cause/solution for most problems in the city–but then points out that “poor” city design to an urban planner could be well-liked by its residents, and that enforcing “good” city design on a community is just gentrification.

I struggle with this point because I strongly believe both truths can exist at once–sociopolitical and economic issues definitely play a bigger role in the success of cities, the continuation of urban decline in many places, and the weakening of cities in general, in my opinion. The housing crisis, cost-of-living crisis and other situations make strong cities very difficult when the issue is with broader factors, and that most cities would struggle with this unless they operate under a radically different economic model or that everything about city policy and planning is designed to mitigate those factors. At the same time, perhaps urban design can still be a way of improving life in the city, even if it’s not the solution to many of the city’s problems. And there are plenty of places that aren’t necessarily economically deprived but still see weak city communities and a struggle to get foot traffic. So clearly both can be true, right?

At the end of the day, I think this is perhaps a contradiction I could continue looking into and thinking about? Unsure where to go next, but we’ll see where these classes take me.

Reflecting on my First Classes / Parthav Easwar / Sustainable Lands and Cities: KIPP & Futures Project (2024-25) by is licensed under a