Student: Andrea Kelley
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Writing Assignment Used for This Interview
Develop a final research paper around any urban planning topic. The topic chosen should be related to any of the themes discussed in class but should explore these themes beyond what is covered in the assigned readings or in class. You could focus on i) a city or region facing a specific urban planning challenge and responses to the same or ii) a significant urban planning issue that piques your interest. This assignment is designed to help you develop and refine your research, writing, and analytical skills as well as your presentation skills. You will be spending considerable time conducting research on the topic city that you pick, so do give it some thought before deciding. Your topic should be one that you can research and analyze with in the given time frame.A list of possible topics will be provided in class. However, you can also suggest a topic that is not included in the list (instructor approval required). Your research will form the basis for your final research paper and in-class oral presentation. You will do the final paper in three stages: i) topic and summary (2 points); ii) outline and bibliography (3 points); iii) final paper (15 points). The maximum length of the paper is 15 pages double-spaced and the minimum is 12 pages double-spaced, not including maps, photographs, and other illustrations. Handouts will be provided to you in class as you work on the final paper.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Urban and Regional Planning, clip 13 of 13( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: The previous writing courses were more general, like English and the others--I don't remember what they were--this one was actually something I was interested in . . . and it was easy for me to pick a subject, within Planning, and write about it . . . [other Writing Intensives now include] Art History, Communicology (Persuasion), and Geography 410: Human Impacts on Environmental Change . . . I just passed in a 23-page paper for that class. I'm enjoying the writing this semester because I'm getting a lot better at it. It's more fun when it's easier . . . We have these one-page papers for Art . . . it's fun to write these little one-page essay where you explore an idea really quick, then you close it off and you're done . . . I get nervous about writing really long papers . . . it was about my home town, in Massachusetts, and it was interesting to research that . . . you realize that it [a long paper] is not as terrifying as you thought it was. First we did an abstract and outline, which we did share with the professor at the beginning of the semester . . . then I would write little hunks of it as I went, and at the end I brought them together.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Urban and Regional Planning, clip 12 of 13( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: Yes, I believe it will. It has gotten me excited about city planning, and it's even an option in my future, like I'm not set on designing just buildings, but I would love to be involved in designing cities or planning cities, and that will definitely remain with me as I move on.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Urban and Regional Planning, clip 11 of 13( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: I plan to go back to the mainland.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Urban and Regional Planning, clip 10 of 13( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: Get a job, not here in Honolulu, but I plan to go back to the mainland, the East Coast--I'm from New England--get some work experience and go to grad school in architecture, and hopefully be an architect someday and design awesome things . . . I didn't think that writing would be a big part of my future--in the past, for some reason, I didn't think that architects write a lot--but you have to communicate with your clients and with the community . . . You have to be able to write your ideas--as an architect you can draw them but you need to be able to write them in words and explain them to other people . . . in a critique, you're being critiqued by your professors, your peers, and by other architects--other people who understand the design process--but when you're an architect, you have to communicate to clients and people who aren't used to hearing that kind of jargon, you have to be able to communicate to them.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Urban and Regional Planning, clip 9 of 13( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: My relationship with students changed because we did a group project at the end of the semester, and she assigned the group members. It changed my relationship with the campus and the city because I understand it more . . . About 1/3 of the class was from architecture, and we would all group together, if she did not separate us, and then you would have a vast difference between groups--for example groups with people who had never designed anything . . . We all had the same topic: an imaginary city with a description of the problems, and you get to build office space, retail space, community space, and living space . . . You get a box of Leggos, and physically you get a big board with the plan of the neighborhood, and you get to stack up and build your little buildings, and your group is divided up into jobs: a city planner, a neighborhood liaison, city liaison, financial analyst. We put it in front of a Board of community members--I think they were City Planners . . . I do see my major or educational experience differently as a result of the course--I see my major as more important to the city as a whole, I see architecture as part of the system of a city, not just one building.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Urban and Regional Planning, clip 8 of 13( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: I know more about Honolulu, and I learned more about the culture by studying the history of the development of Honolulu. We talked about lots of other cities all over the world, too.I live in that neighborhood [Moʻiliʻili], so for that one I picked two problems that I myself would like to see solved: that crazy intersection of Date Street and Kapiʻolanii--it's horrible, and it's not pedestrian-friendly at all--which is one of the reasons why I don't ride my back to school, that intersection, and having to go through it. The other topic was beautifying University Avenue.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Urban and Regional Planning, clip 7 of 13( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: First class I ever took in Planning, and I've always had an interest in Planning, so it changed my views not only as a designer but also as a citizen of the world, and it made me look more critically at the cities I am living in and the strengths and weaknesses of city planning. It changes the way that I use my car, the bus, that I take my bike around, and it has changed me as an architect because I now think of the city as a whole, not just one building . . . Slowly throughout my college career, I have been growing as a writer, and in this class I could tell that I was stepping it up a level, that I was finally understanding the point of writing: that you're supposed to get to a point or explore an idea, so this class gave me an outlet for learning or taking that next step.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Urban and Regional Planning, clip 6 of 13( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: One weakness was that . . . I didn't focus too much on the nitty gritty of getting it built [like another student], I glorified it and made it sound exciting. But there are different aspects, stuff that people don't like, and I didn't really discuss that part of it . . . I definitely could have included some negatives, but I was really excited about the idea, and I think it's a really great thing, so as the writer I was expressing my excitement about it.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Urban and Regional Planning, clip 5 of 13( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: Organization is strong . . . had to submit an outline, and I'm very organized and logical . . . no peer review during the process . . . I really like doing presentations. [Success for me] in writing is when you come to a new idea at the end of it, as opposed to just writing about facts . . . when you actually explore an idea, and by the end of the paper, you, as the writer, have actually discovered something . . . [Success for her instructor in writing]: we had a rubric, she gave us a general outline of what the paper should be . . . she wants us to learn something new, explore an idea that we previously would not have thought of . . . another student had more of a focus on the economics of [rail]--he wasn't an architecture major, but I'm not sure what his major was--mine was more focused on how it would change the lifestyle of people.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Urban and Regional Planning, clip 4 of 13( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: It motivated me, for sure [because of the relationship to the studio project].