WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
Who we are
Root was founded over a decade ago by Master's of Landscape Architecture students in the University of Colorado Denver - College of Architecture and Planning to generate, curate, and share ideas related to the field of Planning and Design. This year, Volume Eleven continues in this pursuit with a new prompt and a new scope.
We are a group of students in Landscape Architecture, Urban Planning, and Architecture – all focused on conducting an important discussion within our communal field. For more information on us, the people behind the scenes, explore our Root Team page (forthcoming).
What we're doing
Your prompt this year is: What is the greatest challenge facing our community as we enhance our spaces for the future?
We chose this prompt, and this specific wording, in order to accumulate different perspectives and different responses across the field as a whole. The data, both subjective arguments supporting individual responses, as well as objective data, such as the number of similar responses, will set the stage for a more informed, coherent conversation of what we want the future to look like and, hopefully, how to get there.
Historically, Root has maintained a modest footprint with local circulation. It is our goal to expand the conversation to more of the professions in the field of Planning and Design, to more levels of seniority within each profession, and to more readers.
To that end, we’re soliciting writing from more faculty and professionals. We’re growing beyond the page and onto the web where we plan to publish the entirety of our material. Meanwhile, the printed journal will be distilled down to some of our most poignant responses. We’re also collecting data in the form of a one-minute survey. We also hope to host a symposium or seminar for respondents to explain their justifications and interact with other view points. We also recognize how this prompt cuts to the core of many priorities and begs futher conversation about how we overcome these challenges. To stoke this aspect of the conversation and look to the future, we installed a 'Manifestos' section to hear the ideals and pledges of place makers.
Our goal
Any project of almost any size within the field of Planning and Design will involve multiple areas of expertise: architects working with landscape designers or civil engineers working with urban planners or ecologists working with developers. We are constantly working side by side, or nearby, or one after another, but it’s unclear how much we work together. As students staring down the barrel of growing cities, population growth, climate change, gentrification, large-scale civil unrest, and the inevitable need for a paycheck, we want to know what hurdles are in front of us. And how we can begin to coordinate and cooperate between fields to resolve or reduce them? The first step is to understand each others’ perspectives because, individually, we can’t make the future what we want it to be. So let’s talk about it.
Our goal is to organize a dialogue for what the future should be and what challenges lay ahead. We hope you join the conversation!