William Jett
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read
I am the sum of my experiences

Invisibility and Urban Planning

I recently finished reading Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. I had read it a long time ago as a young man in my twenties. Rereading it as a middle-aged man made the book a lot more meaningful, especially in reference to urban planning.

Invisible Man was more meaningful because Ellison related invisibility to experience. “I was my experiences and my experiences were me,” said the nameless protagonist in the novel. In coming to an awareness of his own invisibility, the protagonist had first to define himself in terms of his experiences. He was an invisible man because people, particularly those of European descent, refused to see him as a product of his own experiences. Someone once said that we are the sum of our experiences. Many people refuse to see themselves as the sum of anything. Because life is defined by relatedness, anything that violates the gestalt principle is troubling.

However, our experiences do shape us as human persons. Our experiences, as John Dewey understood, can either enrich or impoverish us as human persons. Experience involves the interaction of individuals with their environment. Urban planning is at the center of this interaction. According to the American Planning Association, “When government officials, business leaders, and citizens come together to build communities that enrich people’s lives, that’s planning.” (https://www.planning.org/aboutplanning/). Essentially, urban planning is about bringing a diversity of people together in the built environment to create enriching experiences. In other words, urban planning should make the invisible visible.

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