33 Small City Housing • Interview • Ellie Abrons Wes Hiatt To follow up on the comprehensive land use reform effort, I’m curious what the engagement, or relational work, looked like? How has your background as an architect and designer shaped the way you do that relational work? Ellie Abrons I think as architects we do have unique skill sets that can come to bear on the process. I’d name three things. One, we’re good project managers – we can manage complexity and coordinate large, diverse data sets. Two, we’re conveners – we bring people together with common interests or goals, but different viewpoints, expertise, motivations, or desired outcomes. And three, we’re trained to be problem solvers, which is to say that we are (sometimes to our detriment) inherently optimistic. We possess an almost willful naivete that allows us to think we can design our way through a problem, and that has been really important for me on the planning commission. –Ellie Abrons As architects we do have unique skill sets that can come to bear on the process. 6:36 7:49
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