Plans and Processes

In our conversation about community building in Sugar House, one of the ideas we discussed was the concept of creating an illustrative master plan for the Westminster and Sugar House communities. Basically it would demonstrate the physical form of the community in the landscape and serve to visually connect the Westminster Campus to the Sugar House District. Ideally, while representing what is, the plan will also reflect what can be. It will become a living document that illustrates the possibilities.

Water, food, music, art, history, stories, landmarks, and the presence of detail have power to promote connection, fostering the attachment that binds people to each other and to the places they live. Their civic space is strengthened by extension. Places and plans for these elements are what we hope to illustrate with the Envision Sugar House Master Plan.

The plan will show the areas within the landscape where pedestrian pathways can be enhanced and/or created to connect people. It will show where community building events (like the splendid Sugar House Stroll by Brolly Arts) can be planned and programmed. And it will provide a clear image from which to draw when discovering new ways to make connections and dreaming of new ways to bring people together.

Westminster College and Sugar House are places where everyone belongs. In honor of the spirit of peace and inclusion for all, in honor of community building, in honor of the process, and in honor of making no small plans, I'd like to offer the words of others who have spoken of plans and processes much better than I am able.

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die." Daniel Burnham, Architect and Urban Planner, Plan of Chicago

"We slowly learn that life consists of processes as well as results, and that failure may come quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of one's method as from selfish or ignoble aims. We are thus brought to a conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all [people], nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all [people], but as that which affords a rule for living as well as a test of faith. Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself." Jane Addams, Hull House, Chicago

I look forward to our conversations, our processes, our dreams, and what we will make real in the process as we work together for the good of people and our places.

We're all in this together. Thank Goodness. :-) Big plans? We can be the change we're hoping for. Small moves for success? We just need to rethink the size of our catalog.

Kathleen Hill