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DIARY OF A TOWN PLANNER When did we stop caring?
BY OANNA JADCZAK BA (HONS), MA PLANNING AND SUSTAINABILITY & CARMEL KHALILIAN, MSC DEVELOPMENT PLANNING From a very young age we are exposed to urban planning and architecture, often unaware, as the notion of town planning is deeply rooted in our curious nature, seeking to discover, build, make and create whilst using the vivid imagination as children we are all gifted with. Do you remember how excited you used to be when making or building your first dream doll or Lego house, building an entire railway set with houses, trees, animals and people, or the time you made decisions about real estate purchases when playing monopoly to build and design your own little empire coupled with a thriving economy?
We began to understand the dangers associated with ‘bad’ planning creative thinking about city planning. New opportunities to engage the youngsters and allow them to learn through various city-building games like SimCity, The Settlers or Tycoon City, allowed children of all ages to experience the complexities of city planning, whilst having fun planning, organising, building,
designing and experiencing, for the first time, various challenges involved in the process. As we grew older, we would go on field trips with our schools to see historic sites and buildings. We sat in classrooms learning about the dangers of pollution, the important function that trees play in our ecosystem, new technological advances that have impacted waste collection and processing, or energy generation, as well as the need to protect green areas from overdevelopment and animal species from extinction.
At some point in our lives we will have either made models of buildings, decorated and drawn on shoe boxes, or built forts and castles with defensive walls to prevent enemy invasion into our imaginary kingdoms, as we understood the function of these buildings and structures. Later, a whole other world of opportunities presented itself with the introduction of PC and video gaming into mainstream culture on a global scale, further stimulating our imagination and GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE APRIL 2020
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