I know a lot about my site, and I know a lot about the recent history that has made it the depressing landscape that it is, but how do I look at those vast areas of parking, financial depressed businesses, strip-mall outlets and fast food stores to imagine futures that are bright and promising? It took a lot of reading, writing and thinking, in cyclical iterations.
The scenarios, obviously, are simply a means to an end. To look at different futures and what they entail, then take the best design elements from each and work with those towards a project that is more realistic in the end.
My two scenarios were entitled Alpine Style and Amnesty+. In the former, energy access has become scarce, and cities/neighborhoods need to become as self-reliant and efficient as possible. In the latter, I envisioned a world where the federal government made allowances for amnesty of current illegal citizens, and created a legal guest-worker program. According to research, this would result in a population surge in my capstone area of almost 400,000 people over the highest current population projections.
These scenarios pulled me through a handful of design ideas that included using the space underneath 35W as a kind of parking ramp, and changing the streetscape to take full advantage of solar gain.
Given the short amount of time that we were working on this kick-off design push, there isn't much in the body of work I created that I hold too much stake in, but it started the process, and that is likely the most important outcome. To be sure, the first set of ideas that I generate in any design process are absolute garbage, but often there are some pieces that I can carry forward, and this was that stage in my capstone process.
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