Designing a better world.

Prof. Banerjee’s talk hopefully gave everyone a lot to ponder. We are limited in the ability to implement design thinking methodology, given our lack of direct access to the Anam community. However, the people on site at the Chife Foundation are eager to help. As our designs move forward, it will be key to check in with them, get their input, and have them show off our designs to other community members.

It makes me think of my experience designing roads for the city over the summer. We put together a progressive street layout that features dedicated and protected bike lanes, traffic-calming interventions, and stormwater planters. Showing it off to community members, we thought they would love the new idea. Instead, they asked, “Why have a bike line? Just make the road wider.” We were so caught up on providing bike access — a high priority among urban planners in the developed world — to not realize that people here don’t care about bicycles. They see it as backwards. They want big roads for big cars, because that’s the way the United States looks. It’s hard to ask a community to skip the mistakes of other societies, especially when those mistakes were made because it implemented a system that — in the short term — was more convenient.