"Shut Up and Listen!"

Since the advent of what we term "modern" and/or professional urban planning around the 1900's, it's clear that it may miss the point of what it's designed to do: plan for people. In my humble opinion, I believe this is partly because of a population explosion; before large cities we had towns and small villages - connected communities of people that, to a certain extent knew each other and worked for or with each other. As populations expanded, degrees of separation began to build between people, and we kind of forgot the most important element of all: each other. 

Dr. Sirolli is one of my Dad's friends who believes in a "person-centered approach to community and economic development," and he's been very successful with this. While it is not directly related to city planning, the messages he brings fourth are.

We must shut and up and listen. Listen to our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers; listen to our community. That's it. And yet while it seems simple, it's not easy. 

Dr. Sirolli makes another interesting point, he says that there is a problem with community meetings. "Entrepreneurs never come, and they never tell you, in a public meeting, what they want to do with their own money, what opportunity they have identified. So planning has this blind spot. The smartest people in your community you don't even know, because they don't come to your public meetings." This idea then, that Dr. Sirolli has capitalized on, has been to create a social infrastructure that hasn't existed previously, learning how to get people to come and talk to him and ultimately helping them based on their needs.

Some people might be wondering "well, what does this have to do with planning cities?" While in some ways, connecting entrepreneurs with a community's future brings the conversation to another level, at a basic level I can extract what's most important: Listening to communities, and not just communities, but individual people. Planners and community leaders shouldn't be there to direct but rather to connect, empathize, strategize, and represent. This builds trust, strong communities, even friendships.

In recent years it seems that there's been paradigm shift, putting the focus on the people of communities, with trail runs and experiments that involve everyone or "I Wish This Was" sticker campaigns. 

Final words from Dr. Sirolli's TED Talk:

"What we have to look at is at how we feed, cure, educate, transport, communicate for seven billion people in a sustainable way. The technologies do not exist to do that. Who is going to invent the technology for the green revolution? Universities? Forget about it! Government? Forget about it! It will be entrepreneurs, and they're doing it now."

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Links/sources:

Dr. Sirolli's TED Talk
Strategy and Business article about Dr. Sirolli
History of Urban Planning Wikipedia