Multimedia Urbanists
Welcome To The New Age Of Planning
Soundtrack to this blog: Radioactive — Imagine Dragons ft. Kendrick Lamar
This past weekend, I attended the 5th Next City Vanguard conference in Chattanooga — it’s an annual conference that recognizes 40 under 40 up-and-coming urban leaders.
While there, I documented my journey, hashtaging #Vanguard14 on Twitter and Instagram, to give folks who couldn’t join an opportunity to see what was going on.
I’ve been documenting things consciously for about 2 years. Ironically, my first foray into multimedia documentation started at the Next City Vanguard 2012 conference in St. Louis, for which I am an alum. I signed up for Instagram just days before attending, and have been “gramming” and much much more ever since.
The New Age
Speaking with the Vanguards old and new, it occurred to me that not everyone is hip to the power of social media/multimedia documentation. It’s more of a chore than a part of the Urbanist’s given skill set.
Me, I love it! LOVE IT!!!
I’m on all the mainstream social media platforms and ones you haven’t heard of — @patrickm02L.
Urbanists always talk about how we need to connect more, find ways to engage, and listen to the community better. Well, guess what, here’s a great way to do that, and it doesn’t cost anything!
Whether gramming a picture of the city, taking a Selfie with other urbanists, or posting videos of your projects to YouTube, multimedia documentation leaves a trail of bread crumbs and a personal history of what you’re seeing and doing. In my work as a freelancer, it has also become an instrumental way to market myself.
Additionally, I follow tons of folks in planning and different sectors that are taking on cities in innovative ways (see list below). I’m inspired on the daily, and I’m always on the look out for cool people doing cool things.
Multimedia Savvy
Who are the urbanists that we listen to the most?
The ones we listen to most are the ones that write books and articles, the ones that have TED Talks, the ones who have branded themselves well and are resources for knowledge.
Yes, there are great planners out there who are doing great shit, but they’re not telling anybody. Their message isn’t getting heard, and so a lot of times our great initiatives go unnoticed and we think that nobody cares.
In our information driven world, it’s not that nobody cares, it’s that if you’re not constantly publishing your thoughts and ideas then NOBODY WILL KNOW!
I will say this ‘til the day I die:
If you’re doing cool shit people want to know about it! They want to access it and be able to access YOU!
Market Yourself
Make people care about what you’re doing!
That means getting hip to social media. If you haven’t already, get yourself a Twitter, Instagram, and Medium account — that’s really the bare minimum you need to establish your own brand. If you’re a company, you’ll also need Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and YouTube. Really, just get it all!
I know social media is scary, but as an urbanist whose duty it is to help people understand the city, it’s necessary that you incorporate these skills into your lexicon. Plus it’s fun!
After 2 years of social media-ing, I’ve also found that it’s the fastest way to connect with other like-minded individuals and the fastest way to affect change if you don’t have money.
A Few Folks I Follow and Why
Logic to this list — folks who popped into my head immediately.
- Alissa Walker — Journalist for Gizmodo in LA. She has been a multimedia journalist talking about things urban for about a decade.
- Alex Dodds — Deputy Director of Communications at Smart Growth America. Always tweeting urban stuff and is super funny.
- Mallory Baches — Serves on the Board of the Association of Community Design with me, has an awesome practice called the Civic Hub, and fellow Next City Vanguard.
- Latent Design (Katherine Darnstadt) — Badass architect out of Chicago doing amazing community-led work. AIA Young Architect Awardee and GOOD 100.
- Lou Huang — Former Code for America Fellow. Fellow Next City Vanguard. StreetMix creator.
- Lyzi Diamond — Current Code for America Fellow. Mapping guru. Super active on twitter and super funny.
- Alissa Walker — same as above
- Randy Vines — Co-owner of STL-Style in St. Louis. Always posting wonderful St. Louis city news, architecture and about his T-shirt shop. Fellow Vanguard.
- Jeff Vines — Co-owner of STL-Style. Similarly posts about all things St. Louis. Fellow Vanguard.
- John Cary — Based in San Francisco. Creator of the Public Interest Design blog, The City 2.0 TED Prize, and a few Autodesk Initiatives. Travels a lot and takes a lot of city pics.
