New Urban Progress

I was lucky enough to have Mike Lydon, fellow New Urbanist, author of the New Urban Progress blog, and all around excellent guy, fit me into his busy schedule yesterday while he's home from his first semester at Michigan's urban planning and design school. Despite technically being a Wolverine, it seems that Mike is enjoying school quite a bit. I was especially surprised to hear that not all students in his program are urban design nerds like we are. What?

Also interesting is the fact that few schools center their programs around traditional neighborhood development and traditional architecture as Notre Dame and Miami do, so even though the dean is a New Urbanist and there are NU faculty, Mike feels in the minority as a dedicated New Urbanist. I think being exposed to all aspects of design thought is incredibly valuable and makes a well-rounded designer, but I'd hate to miss out on what I'd learn at a full-time NU program.

Most appealing to me was hearing about Mike's life as an urban design student, the studio time, history of urban form class, designing and drawing.... Studying and drawing full time, and not just at night and on weekends, sounds amazing to me. If I converted my current free time activity into my full time activity, would I have to find a new hobby to fill up my free time? Hmmm.