what could make Englewood a better place to live in

     In my urban planning class we have been focusing and learning about retrofitting and renewing different spaces like dead malls, suburban spaces, neighborhoods and more. We learned about eminent domain, redlining, and transit. We watched different ted talks and reflected on them and read the devil in the white city which revolved around the worlds fair. We looked at the birth of urban planning and how it has evolved since 1898. We talked to Peter Exley who is the co-founder of of the firm Architecture is Fun and former president of the American Institute of Architecture. We also talked to Daniel Grove, an Urban Planner from Kimley-Horn. We learned new information from both of these wonderful people and took that into consideration for our last action project of our junior year! For this final action project we were asked to pick a neighborhood in Chicago and then pick a block we thought we could improve, whether it was adding stuff or taking things down. I decided to focus on a block in the Englewood neighborhood. I made a slide show that is below to show you what I have came up with. 

this was one of the more time consuming acton projects I have done. I loved doing and the only part I think really was challenging and took the most time was the 3D model because I chose to make it out of cardboard rather than digitally. Overall, I enjoyed this project I liked being able to figure out what things can make a neighborhood and even a block a better place to live in. Some problems I encountered during this project was picking a neighborhood to start. The way I overcame this was honestly just doing what first came to mind. Some things I could have done to make this process easier would be doing some research ahead of time which I didn't this time (oops). For somebody doing this project I would say to use your time wisely! But I am proud of my block and the only thing I would do differently would not be a huge procrastinator which I am very guilty of and that is something I need to work on. Anyways, this is my last action project for my urban planning class as a junior here at gce, see you next year!