Miles Horner

2/3/22

Proposal Pt. 1

My project is going to be a research project, learning about urban design and urban farming. The final product will be a research paper, guided by the question: “How does the way we design our cities globally inform food and class disparities, and, what role can equitable urban design and urban farming play in mitigating those disparities?” The main part of the 4C’s of the LREI that I’m trying to engage in is critical thinking. I hope to critically examine how our cities are built and the history of urban design- trying to see how through that history, disparities have been created and reinforced. I also want to approach this project from a global perspective – the US is not the only place where urban design can impact people, so trying to make sure that I engage many different perspectives is key. Engaging in different perspectives is also part of the other key aspect of my project: volunteering at urban farms throughout NYC. NYC is filled with urban farms that are vibrant and incredibly helpful to their communities. Volunteering with and learning from the people that run these farms has been incredibly rewarding to me in the past, and I hope to do it now with a critical perspective in mind. These farms are directly challenging the disparities that exist in urban environments by bringing healthy food to food deserts and fostering community in places where it has been intentionally deprived. Learning from the people who do these things is a key part of my project, and I will try and volunteer with and interview as many of these people as possible during the course of my project. 

 

How Will I measure Success:

 

I think the main way that I’ll measure success is through how much I learn from the experiences I have. I’m fairly confident I can learn enough about the history of urban design and urban farming and how the two inform each other through papers, movies, and books, but my biggest hope for the project is that I learn a lot from the actual experiences I have working with activists and professionals in the field. Obviously, I’ll also measure it by how exhaustively researched my paper is and the actual things that I learned from the content, but I can research urban design any day. I want the majority of my project to be actually informed by the interviews with experts in the field and the things that I learn from working on urban farms and seeing the impact that those farms can have. I think if around 40% of my paper is made up of references to actual experiences that I actually had, and not research I did, I’ll feel like my project was a success.