Communicating in the Windy City...
After dashing between bus-lines and trotting along the Chicago River with luggage ... in heels ... I landed someplace positively wonderful. In the typically austere space of a hotel conference room, I found myself engaged, once again, in an empassioned dialogue across the table, the US, generations, a couple of oceans, and methodological and pedagogical standpoints about one thing: communication in the city.
For the last two years I have had the pleasure and priviledge of meeting with a group of 30-35 empassioned communication researchers and professors, consultants, planners, and (a few other) students to swap research on communciation in cities. These presentations are launching points for the larger aim - generating ideas for how to make our communication research "move out" into the cities that we love. For a whole day, this group argues ideas and approaches, applauds efforts for good research and those who are asking tough questions of themselves and their cities, and adjourns with a vow to return the following year to continue the discussion ... and to follow up on how well we have applied ourselves to getting ourselves and our students out of the classroom and into the city.
The whole "point," if you will, of the Urban Communication Foundation is to explore, promote, and DO good work for our communities -- to understand how to make cities places that are communicative and communicatively rich for ALL who live there. This has several implications: raising voices of those typically disenfranchised or ignored by city policy makers, creating spaces where exchages across whatever socioeconomic lines are drawn across the cities, becoming advocates for groups in the city and using business or university resources to mobilize that advocacy, crafting truly participatory efforts to engage and empower those with whom we might work, play, or research, using the city as a labratory for our students to practice engaged citizenship, "hanging out" more in our own neighborhoods and chatting with neighbors, and more ...
The striking thing about this day-long feast for the community-centered being is that communication is a benchmark of urban livablity. Without communciation, policies cannot be changed, relationships and alliances cannot be forged, public transit remains silent and wholly bland ... change cannot happen. The strands of the rhizomatic webs that inter/connect interconnect us in city and community places break without communication. If we engage ourselves and others in meaningful exchanges about the states of our shared lives in our neighborhoods and cities, we might be amazed at what could happen.
The UCF has a great website and their own blog ... I'm sure that the lines will be aflutter after last week's rousing meeting. The papers that were presented (very briefly) and used as launching points for conversations are also available for the public's consumption, if you're at all interested. I, for one, am looking forward to meeting with everyone in San Diego next year, and had better get crackin' on acting in and for the city!
For the last two years I have had the pleasure and priviledge of meeting with a group of 30-35 empassioned communication researchers and professors, consultants, planners, and (a few other) students to swap research on communciation in cities. These presentations are launching points for the larger aim - generating ideas for how to make our communication research "move out" into the cities that we love. For a whole day, this group argues ideas and approaches, applauds efforts for good research and those who are asking tough questions of themselves and their cities, and adjourns with a vow to return the following year to continue the discussion ... and to follow up on how well we have applied ourselves to getting ourselves and our students out of the classroom and into the city.
The whole "point," if you will, of the Urban Communication Foundation is to explore, promote, and DO good work for our communities -- to understand how to make cities places that are communicative and communicatively rich for ALL who live there. This has several implications: raising voices of those typically disenfranchised or ignored by city policy makers, creating spaces where exchages across whatever socioeconomic lines are drawn across the cities, becoming advocates for groups in the city and using business or university resources to mobilize that advocacy, crafting truly participatory efforts to engage and empower those with whom we might work, play, or research, using the city as a labratory for our students to practice engaged citizenship, "hanging out" more in our own neighborhoods and chatting with neighbors, and more ...
The striking thing about this day-long feast for the community-centered being is that communication is a benchmark of urban livablity. Without communciation, policies cannot be changed, relationships and alliances cannot be forged, public transit remains silent and wholly bland ... change cannot happen. The strands of the rhizomatic webs that inter/connect interconnect us in city and community places break without communication. If we engage ourselves and others in meaningful exchanges about the states of our shared lives in our neighborhoods and cities, we might be amazed at what could happen.
The UCF has a great website and their own blog ... I'm sure that the lines will be aflutter after last week's rousing meeting. The papers that were presented (very briefly) and used as launching points for conversations are also available for the public's consumption, if you're at all interested. I, for one, am looking forward to meeting with everyone in San Diego next year, and had better get crackin' on acting in and for the city!
posted by Jes at
9:10 PM
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