It all started with a simple Sony commercial. Hundreds of thousands of colorful bouncy balls teeming/pouring down the streets of San Francisco. The contrast of the vivid rubber spheres against the straight-line/conventional urban backdrop was intended to represent the various color possibilities with a Sony LCD screen. A simple enough concept, but it changed my life. From this commercial, I realized that cities could be fun - even magical places, not urban wastelands where creativity stagnates and dreams go to die. Those bouncy balls captured the essence of what I was looking for in my city – mirth. A bit of unexpected magic. I did not realize it at the time (It took me several years to realize it), but I became an urban designer in the span of two and a half minutes. I began asking myself “what does this place want to be?” and using that to infuse mirth into my surroundings. I spread some of this joy to other people, imbuing a moment of delight into an otherwise ordinary day. Little did I know I was establishing a sense of place/ improve my city. Imagine my surprise when/In the summer of 2013, I took my first urban ecology course and found myself among my own kind – people who carried the same energetic optimism for improving their communities. …show more content…
The commercial also represents a process/engineering that appeals to me: when an idea is simple effortless, (example – protected intersections), but behind the idea is complex. The fact that people would be willing to work so hard to bring some joy, something to appear effortless and thus fun. That elegance is what draws me to city planning. That someone decided to launch bouncy balls down the famously steep streets because they could (just for the hell of it). What you do not see are the months of planning and coordination that went in to making it look effortless. That in and of itself is