Mon, 31 July 2006
I'm having a conversation with Bill Boothe, a city project planner and skilled facilitator. This isn't really so much about the nuts and bolts of city planning as about people. Do you sometimes get the feeling that, as a human trying to navigate around a city, you're not really the priority? That it's the cars, the buildings and the flow of stuff that counts - not people? Bill Boothe has some insights and answers. Talking to me today from his high-rise home overlooking the urban community of Houston, Texas, Bill is someone I've been acquainted with for years through our shared interest in an organization whose focus is to help us learn to live a more conscious life - the More To Life Program. Bill and I recently found ourselves deep into the topic of how we live our lives in the spaces created for us. Whether these living and working spaces are consciously or unconsciously created, they affect our behavior. I wanted to know more about this with regards to past, present and future city planning. Bill is a public and private project planner and skilled facilitator with a diverse background. For 30 years he has been working in architectural design, regional planning, behavioral sciences, and personal and organizational development. He is all about creating conscious environments, and he's an advocate for having a deliberate context for growth--any growth. In this conversation, he takes us on an exploration of how we got where we are--the whole fabric of society, if you will--through the lens of private and public planning of the spaces we live in. And, even more interestingly, the ways in which we are affected by our surroundings and how they guide our behavior and subtly hardwire our choices. So today Bill and I explore a broad range of public-planning topics and see how they are indeed expressions of our cultural values. He'll take us through examples of urban life in major US cities to see the long-range impact of rapid growth, automobile dependence, and "not in my backyard" thinking. And the dehumanizing effect this has on society--oftentimes leaving us feeling isolated, less secure, and disconnected from our humanness. So sit back and enjoy this multi-faceted conversation about how we live with our environmental design and material assets--our stuff. Perhaps you will see aspects of yourself in the mirror Bill holds up to our consumer behavior and environmental design. I know I did. Comments[3]
|
Email Tom For Feedback | Copyright © 2005-2006 Talking Portraits
Except where otherwise noted, this blog is licensed under a Creative Commons License Specifically - Sample 1.0