37 Small City Housing • Interview • Ellie Abrons Ellie Abrons A huge part of my motivation to be on the Planning Commission, and why I’m doing it six and a half years later, when I really don’t have the time, is that it feels like one of the more important things I’ve done in my career. I’m not trained as a planner, but it allows me to serve my community, it’s adjacent to my training and expertise as an architect where I feel like I can meaningfully contribute, and it opens up a way to be in my community in a really different way than I was as a professor who lives here. The connection to my community is so much deeper, richer, and more expansive than it was when I was in my academic bubble. I’ve also learned a lot about how things get built. We aren’t really taught in architecture school how things get built, where the money comes from, and why things often look so bad! That’s been pretty eye opening for me. This opens up an interesting question: how can academic work provide the same sense of meaning and impact that volunteering on a commission might give? Part of the answer is going back to tenure structures, funding structures, what we’re rewarded for in academia – and seeking reforms that would allow people to do different kinds of work. Wes Hiatt Do you feel that your work on the planning commission has shaped how you think about implementing efforts in Ann Arbor? And thinking as an educator, how do you see that knowledge carrying forward through students who will ultimately take this work to many different places? Ellie Abrons Starting first with implementation, we are right on the precipice of adopting this CLUP that we’ve been working 19:57 22:42 24:04
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