Division 4 started their year of HuMST studying urban planning. Students focused on understanding why and how planners make decisions about cities. They read excerpts from Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City, Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, and Todd Rose’s The End of Average in order to explore the pitfalls of urban planning. Students also watched multiple documentaries including the classic film, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, and studied placemaking. Students then left Meridian, and found sites throughout Jamaica Plain to observe. They each spent ten hours over the course of a week taking observation notes on a site of their choice. After finishing their observations, students learned how to use the Innovators’ Compass, a design-thinking tool. Plugging in their own observations, as well as the principles of urban planning, students brainstormed new ways to tackle issues they had identified at their sites. They then learned to use ArcGIS, a geographic information system used by urban planners everywhere, to perform experiments using large datasets to try and better understand their chosen issue, and solve it.
