Bridging to a New Home

Bridging to a New Home

by Lester Limón Built Capital Cultural Capital Human Capital Natural Capital Social Capital

A bridge, depending on context, can describe many things. It describes a structure that spans a gap, a connection between two sides of a debate, or a common connection between people. Regardless, it always symbolizes a positive relationship.

 

The bridge pictured is the Royal Gorge Bridge in Fremont County, Colorado. Completed in 1929, it was the highest suspension bridge in the world with a deck height of 955 feet above the Arkansas River. It physically demonstrates many of the definitions outlined earlier. It connects two points, it brought people together to work on a common effort, and it exemplifies courage and confidence in its boldness.

 

For me, it symbolizes a creative solution designed to achieve all three aspects identified: planning (people), design (process), and implementation (place).

 

Building bridges is the act of crossing gaps to achieve a destination. Sometimes, that destination is a goal you set for oneself in life. Goals and inspirations are motivators drawing one forward. When using the phrase, “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” one is proclaiming that issues and obstacles in one’s future will not overcome one’s efforts and talents.

 

Confidence and courage are traits we all have. Some are displayed in overt and admirable ways; some are internal motivations, privately steering one’s efforts and ambitions. Recently, p3 communities, inc. moved from the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains. This relocation is a bridge I have come to cross, both literally and figuratively, and demonstrates my confidence and courage in building a new practice, and I know this move will not overcome my efforts and talents!

 

p3 is elated to call Cañon City, Colorado and Fremont County, home. I will continue to build healthy, sustainable, and prosperous communities both in the architectural projects I develop, and in the community development exercises I facilitate. I look forward to the many bonding and bridging relationships I will develop. I know that my past twenty-five years of service to people and their communities will provide me twenty-five more years of service in my new home.

 

I’ll see you on the other side!

Finding the Wind at Your Back

Finding the Wind at Your Back

by Lester Limón Cultural Capital Human Capital Natural Capital Social Capital Uncategorized

In bicycle racing, the rule is conservation of energy, You spend your time looking for wind shadows among the peloton while your strategy, whether team or individual, plays out along the miles of road ahead and underneath.

I have spent most of my time playing both the role of windbreaker and sufferer. Making large holes in the wind where teammates could plan their win is both frustrating and noble for me. I like the idea that I’m strong enough and fit enough to pull an armada of carbon technology behind me for miles. I also like the notion that suffering was my job, and I played the role selflessly for the betterment of the team. I don’t know what that says about me specifically, but I’m sure there’re others who feel similarly. We enjoy the work and we do it for little recognition. We like being appreciated, and certainly we like winning! But the work is the focus. However, race day is a single event.

Training for race day takes weeks of physical and mental preparation on roads lonely and alone, devoid of the camaraderie of the peloton. Pros train together in temperate climates in exotic locations, and are supported by mechanics, nutritionists, and managers. Privateers have only their tool bags and the myriad bars and gels they carry in jersey pockets.

Training using miles of endless tarmac and gravel give you the opportunity to hone what you love about the suffering and perseverance. It also gives you the opportunity to read the landscape surrounding you, building the encyclopedia of knowledge of the wind; how it gusts and where you can both hide from it and use it to your advantage.

The best time spent in the cockpit of a bicycle is that sweet spot where your speed matches the wind at your back. You suddenly hear the world around you. The click of the shifter and the subtle shift of the derailleur, the soothing rhythmic rotation of pedals, cranks, and shoes. All the mechanization that happens on every ride is suddenly part of your senses. You suddenly hear the sound of rubber tires on pavement or the crunching of gravel beneath mountain bike tires. Listening to the world around you is truly bliss. It is the closet thing to weightlessness I can imagine on Earth.

Finding that sweet spot in daily life is a quest we all pursue. When do you find those moments? Do you recognize them when they appear? And do you enjoy and take advantage of the moment?

Strategic planning will win races, both in business and life. Training and hard effort will prepare us for the work it takes to be successful, whether we win individually or as a team member. But enjoying those moments that are solely experiential are the cream of life. Skim it off every chance you get.

The Eisenhower Memorial and the planning process

by Lester Limón Built Capital Natural Capital Political Capital Uncategorized

Reading the article “Gehry’s Changes to the Eisenhower Memorial Meet  with Further Resistance” from Architect Magazine written by Witold Rybczynski concerning the seemingly constant redesign of the Eisenhower Memorial in the District of Columbia, I was struck to two things.  First, to defend the Kansas landscape, a critical  remark attributed to no one, stated that the landscape  depicted on the 440 foot long tapestry panels could be Kazakhstan as well as Kansas (calling to mind the state Eisenhower was born in). Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Cal), an ex-officio member of the National Capital Planning Commission, the organization currently reviewing the project, stated that he’s “been in Kazakhstan, and he’s right.” Let me please be the first to remind everyone Kansas, as well as Kazakhstan, are both home to tallgrass prairie landscapes, which are unique biomes and are rare in the world. In fact, the rarity is so unique that the National Park Service commissioned the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve (nps.gov, for more information) in Chase County, Kansas just 75 miles from Gen. Eisenhower’s birthplace in Abilene, Kansas. Kazakhstan lies in the Central region of the Eurasian Steppe, a vast grassland that extends from the Danube River to the Pacific Ocean. The Central portion (or Kazakh Steppe) is defined more accurately as the region between the Ural Mountains in Russia and Dzungaria in China. Instead of criticizing the fact that Kansas may not be distinguishable from Kazakhstan, why not bring awareness to the similarities of these two regions a world apart from each other. Our history in Kansas is tied to the western steppe region in southern Russia. Our ancestry, our traditions, and  our agriculture are all prairie-based and visitors to D.C. should be aware of that. Yes, we have trees and valleys, but Kansas is mostly prairie and that is what should be shown, as this is the landscape Gen. Eisenhower would be most familiar with from his childhood.

The second thing I became aware of the issues surrounding the planning process. While the author chose to focus on the perceived over-stepping of the planning committee’s boundary in the survey process, I take a broader exception to my perception that the boundaries may not be fully understood by the committee and that an ex-officio member of the committee needs to state the pragmatically obvious to those who are in charge. Concurrently, there seems to be a need for a moderator of the discussion to help keep the boundaries well defined and the conversations focused. Likewise, if there are concurrent questions of aesthetic, which apparently fall under the direction of the Commission of Fine Arts, and planning, why aren’t all voices in the room at the same time? Would this conversation be more beneficial to the designer if all comments were made in a comprehensive manner. Rep. Issa’s desire for pragmatism at this point would be more useful if all stakeholders and agencies were in the room, that way a clear, purposeful direction would be delivered to the designers and time, money, and patience in the process wouldn’t be wasted.

We finish.

We finish.

by Lester Limón Natural Capital

During a recent flight from Chicago, my plane was flying over the vast, pale-yellow Flint Hills of Kansas when I overheard two gentlemen in front of me speaking rather alarmed about a fire below. I looked out the window and saw the long plume of smoke rising to momentarily surround our plane. A large area of blackened prairie trailed a long line of orange, snake-like flame.

“Are you seeing that smoke?” the first gentleman said.

“Yes,” said the second. “It must be a fire but I can’t see any buildings.”

Looking up from my iPad, I said, “We’re burning the prairie. It’s spring and time to start the new cycle of tallgrass for the cattle.”

They peppered me with questions about how big the fires were and how they were managed. Having grown up in the Great Plains, I never thought about how much people know about their own regions without knowing too much about others. I don’t know the idiosyncrasies of the Ohio River Valley or the complexities of agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley. But I do know about seasons in the Flint Hills of Kansas.

“We’ll finish cattle on that grass before they go to market,” I said.

“Finish?” one man asked.

“I mean that cattle will be trucked up from surrounding states and put out on the Flint Hills to gain their last bit of weight from the nutritious tallgrasses, giving them the best chance of higher prices in Kansas City and Chicago. Here in Kansas,” I said, “we finish what others started.”

We finish. What a true commentary on the work ethic of Great Plains people.