NUMBER 7

NUMBER 7 FILM OF 2011

 

URBANIZED

So, here I am now, moved from Chicago to San Antonio in a big career and big life move.  I was able to build off of a small portion of my work in Rockford into a new position that is full of challenges and new opportunities.  My municipal organization is different, this big city is very different, and the range of duties and tools at my disposal are at times better and at times more frustrating than my old position.  My title is "Senior Planner" but the explanation of my position to outsiders is getting more and more difficult.  "What planners do..." is becoming a hard question to answer, as the academic pursuit of a planning degree gets further distant from the practice of fitting into a multifaceted group of professionals... some of which don't need to know how important your training is, but rather what you can deliver to the department. 

With time I now have great memories of seeing this movie in the Gene Siskel Film Center (one of my final cinematic experiences) in a theater full of urban planning students, a few old professors and scattered groups of oddball planning enthusiasts.  Urbanized showed for only a limited run and this was the final screening.

This film wasn't perfect.  I was joking with my Chicago planner friends that this wasn't quite the propaganda I was looking for that could turn people to the dark side and be full flag waving supporters of community planning.

What it provided was something more nuanced however.  These vignettes of the complicated situations that arise when folks try to organize space is a reflection of the often chaotic contexts in which planners work.  What is one group's opportunity for grand urban transformation is another group's destruction of natural heritage.  As I work more on specific projects and physical sites in my work I'm going to try not to lose sight that planning is an inherently philosophical profession.  Whether it's a suburban cul-de-sac or a gentrifying neighborhood, planners can't exist unless there is a universal understanding that organizing around the good of a community is an approach that can provide benefits to everyone. Urbanized encouraged that kind of conversation in an age of individualism, and it makes it essential viewing, and at least a top ten film for me.