Reflecting and lessons learnt
Over the last 9 months, I feel I have learned so much not just in lectures and seminars but also from my peers. Blogging has been fundamental for this. It has encouraged me to explore a variety of urban design topics and facilitated a lot of interesting research. Additionally, I have had the opportunity to reflect on other students’ work covering a broad range of topics and create an open dialogue with other students.
Housing Alternatives Design
As I am currently studying this course part-time, getting to work with other students on a design project this semester has been fun. Though I work in a design team at a housing association, often capacity studies and design are restricted due to necessary budgets and constraints. The Housing Alternatives unit has allowed me the opportunity to really explore urban design and create an aspirational and sustainable community.
Blog Writing
In terms of blogging this semester, I have tried to focus on topics that are interlinked with the design elements of the Housing Alternatives units. For this, I was proposing a reduced car development with ample pedestrian and cyclist connections and a mixed community.
Creating a theme has been particularly helpful in allowing me to create more focused blogs with coherent arguments as something which was highlighted in my feedback last semester. With a further reduced word count per blog, this is something I decided to do early on, utilising my initial post to set the overarching theme of accessibility and walkability. Then I used the topics of low traffic neighbourhoods, intergenerational housing, and active travel to feed into my final design proposals for the unit.
I am aware I still struggle to condense down my blogs and this whole process has taught me the importance of being able to edit work, which feeds into both written and design assessments. One element I do think could have been stronger in my overall blogs is my use of case studies and their integration into the overall post to form an opinion.
Concluding thoughts
I think the more informal process of writing blogs will be beneficial when communicating with non-professionals and general users about design in the future.
Furthermore, I have learned particularly over the last semester that if I can review and discuss a topic that is relevant to my own experience, I can provide much more critical analysis. For example, in my 2nd blog post, I reviewed my home, Gosforth, and the reality of the measures that have been put in place as a user myself. Whereas on other blogs such as multi-generational living, it is not something I have personally experienced and thus I rely on research to formulate my opinions.
Upon reflection, I do think I could have worked harder to write my posts ahead of their due date and scheduled them to ensure they were posted on time. This would have been especially useful for the last 2 posts which were delayed due to balancing other deadlines.
