Designing with Play with John Kamp
The planning and design decisions of how our neighborhoods, towns, and cities develop typically feel far away from the people that live there. These decisions create the physical world around us, and have impacts that can either bring community together or pull it apart. They impact how we use energy, how we move around, and how we preserve or degrade our natural surroundings.
For urban designer, facilitator, and landscape contractor John Kamp, principal of Praireform, this is an opportunity to rethink how we engage community in order to create a fun, inclusive process in order to vision into and create sustainable, equitable, safe neighborhoods and cities.
On this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast John and show host Neal discuss John's younger days starting a design firm in his parents' basement, his breakthrough with the idea of an irrigation-free yard, and the immense importance of using the senses to unlock joy and creativity. John has always been inspired by the visceral effect of a beautiful city or landscape and uses that experience as a guide in his work.
Recently John and co-author James Rojas published the book “Dream Play Build” that explores the methodology they use to create deceptively playful experiences that teases out community dreams and desires from hands-on activities.
People love their communities and want them to become safer, healthier, more prosperous places. But the standard approach to public meetings somehow makes everyone miserable. Conversations that should be inspiring can become shouting matches. So what would it look like to facilitate truly meaningful discussions between citizens and planners? What if they could be fun?
