My urbanist journey

As a child, I loved to color maps,or copy the ones in the phone book with tracing paperI(4/22/2026) My urbanist journey began when I taught a first-year course on place at Coe College in 2008. Or maybe it was earlier? I have loved maps since I was tiny (see above). But it was teaching a course at Coe on the Sense of Place that led me to a semester-long study on sabbatical in spring semester 2013.temporary downtown libraryAs I studied the phenomenon of place, I kept running across books on the topic of urban design.I had found my people! I began a blog to sort out all these new (to me) ideas......and here we are! On Holy Mountain, I pay a lot of attention to design issues, both in my hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and in places where I travel, particularly where I'm able to spend a good deal of time in one place, like Washington, D.C. (spring 2018)...Our street, February 2018...and Belgrade, Serbia (May2022).Our street, May 2022IIUrbanism is a movement of architects, planners, and…