Ian Lockwood’s Loeb Fellowship Application

(The events in this post occurred in December 2010)

One item, from James Stockard’s letter that struck me like a 2x4 was the application deadline of Monday, January 3^rd, 2011.  Considering that it was December 6^th, and I had to Fed Ex my application to arrive at Harvard University by the 3rd, my real deadline was more like December 29^th, just over three weeks away. Among other things, the application asked for four essays and a “portfolio” but, as a transportation engineer, I did not have a portfolio.  I wondered if there was even such a thing as a portfolio for transportation engineers and, if so, what would one look like?  Furthermore, I had several consulting tasks to wrap up before the holidays, not to mention to get ready for the holidays themselves.  So, if anyone is still wondering why the Lockwood home was not decorated for the holidays and why my family and I didn’t get around to sending out a holiday card, now you know why.

The Lockwood Clan's Draft Holiday Card

That being said, there was actually a draft card done.  Before my nomination, the card was nicely on schedule.  After reading the application requirements, it was clear the card was going to be a little late.  I made a few subtle changes to the card to reflect its inevitable lateness, but still didn’t get it finished.  The application had priority and by the time it was complete, the card was too late and got shelved.  However, as you can see, from the draft card, our family’s life in 2010 revolved, to a great extent, around volleyball and the Winter Park High School.  It seemed like we were always somewhere on campus.

The interesting thing about completing a Loeb Fellowship application is that everything has strict word-limits or other limits.  Consider letters of recommendation, for example.  I was fully prepared to bury the selection committee with letters of recommendation.  Over the years, I had worked closely with dozens of mayors, business people, redevelopment agency officials, public works people, architects, planners, engineers, park people, DOT officials, environmental groups, city managers, developers, advocacy groups, urban designers, health officials, and so forth.  I knew people from each group who would be happy to write me a letter.  However, the limit was three letters.  Only three?  The limit for the portfolio was four pieces of work.  What, only four?  I was fully prepared to put together a tome.  Each of the four essays was limited by a word count which amounted to about one page each.  One page each?  There was too much to say!  Upon reflection, however, the strict limits made a lot of sense because the competing design professionals were likely prepared to do the same thing as me and the selection committee would, indeed, have been buried in bulky applications.

The challenge quickly became who to pick for references, what work to choose, and what to write about.  My early conclusion was that there was not even close to enough room to cover everything which made the application that much more challenging.  My first strategy was to summarize my background but concluded that, given the space limits, it would be too general.  My strategy ended up being trying to use each part of the application to cover selected aspects of my career, interests, and goals; somewhat like Sally had alluded to in one of her instructions.  For space reasons, I had to leave some chapters of my life out completely and strip away the remainder down to my message.  The message was diversity/depth, room for improvement/potential, and commitment/mission.

The second and simultaneous challenge was to do the soul searching that the four essays required and then, somehow, articulate my thoughts properly within the word count.  The clever nature of the questions forced me to dig deep into what I was about as a design professional, consider the profession as a whole, where I saw my career heading, and what I needed to work on to enable that.  Specifically, the questions were:

i)          What are the issues in our field that concern you?

ii)         How do you think your work has made the most significant impact on the built and natural environment?

iii)        What are your preliminary thoughts about a work plan for your Fellowship year?  What would you like to accomplish?

iv)        Why is this a good time in your career for you to do a Loeb Fellowship and how will it be useful for you to be at the GSD?

The questions seemed simple enough at first glance, but when I began putting pen to paper, it became a bit of a journey.  Consequently, I spent practically every spare moment from December 6th to the 24th thinking about the essays, pondering my future, discussing the issues with my wife and a couple of close colleagues, writing and rewriting the essays, and summarizing them to fit the word count.

For several years, my career had been following a positive but not overly planned trajectory; a kind of natural progression.  My professional growth strategy had been a fairly simple one: choose projects and causes that had the most potential to make a difference; assemble the best teams that I could; exceed clients’ expectations with the things that mattered; be on panels and advisory groups that could push boundaries; help junior staff develop, and write, conduct lectures, and share my ideas as broadly as I could.  It had been far too long since I’d taken stock and thought about how to improve myself; what I needed to do to exploit more of my own potential.  I certainly had never thought about it for several days in a row nor documented it before.  I definitely had not shared anything like that with a selection committee before; consultants simply are not in the habit of doing that sort of thing.  Upon completing the application, particularly the essays, I thought that, even if I did not get awarded a Loeb Fellowship, going through the process was highly worthwhile.

There were so many people who could have written reference letters for me, several of whom are very close friends and colleagues.  I felt troubled that I could not ask them all but I had no choice; only three.  I ended up choosing the references by following the same logic as with the essays.  I tried to provide diversity to my application by anticipating what the references would likely talk about.  Consequently, I asked Tim Jackson, Dan Burden, and Andrew McNeill.

Tim Jackson, who I described in an earlier blog, knows me from the office.  For those of us who do a lot of work-related travel, the office in Orlando is like our home base and Tim represents a lot of glue that keeps it together.  Tim was my partner and supervisor and is one of my mentors.  We had worked together for many years.  He was instrumental in putting together the original Livable Transportation group and sustaining it to this day.  He knows my strengths, weaknesses, work ethic, philosophies, hobbies, and family life and could provide the selection committee with insight into my regular work and home life.

Fabian De La Espriella and Dan Burden

Dan Burden was also a partner of mine for many years and we share a burning desire to change the conventional transportation paradigm into a sustainable one.  Dan is one of those rare “the glass is 10% full kind of people.”  He is hugely optimistic and inspiring to me and to thousands of other people.  He is one of the top pedestrian bicycle people in North America, a true change agent, and a champion of the populace; that is he cares deeply for pedestrians, cyclists, transit users, passive park and open space users, children, Ma and Pa businesses, and all the other people who typically have little or no voice, compared to the big business, special interest, and lobby groups.  Dan started a number of worthy non-profit organizations over the years, is a prolific trainer, and a visionary.  Dan and I love swapping ideas, slides, lessons learned, and insights.  I was hoping Dan could articulate my passion for change at a societal level.



Andrew McNeill, Landscape Architect

Andrew McNeill is a landscape architect and city planner.  Andrew "gets" city-making; he knows what makes them tick.  He is a design leader and strategic thinker in a suburban city in Canada, called “Mississauga,” located just west of Toronto.  Mississauga is approaching a million people and has dozens of Fortune 500 companies headquartered there.  “Toronto’s” airport is actually located in Mississauga.  Years ago, Andrew led one of the largest public outreach efforts for planning and design in Canadian history to determine the vision for Mississauga.  He involved well over 100,000 people.  The upshot of the vision is to change the city from a relatively anonymous suburban place into an urban city with its own identity, as defined by its people.  I was blessed with being part of the team that helped with this complex and ambitious effort.  My role ranged from early educational efforts for the city staff and public, to leading the design of a downtown college campus master plan, to leading the consulting team that prepared the downtown master plan, known as the Downtown21 Master Plan.  I was hoping that Andrew would describe my passion for highly public and collaborative processes that help make cites pleasant and efficient places.

Coordinating the letters of recommendation was not as simple as one might think.  There were confidentiality requirements, references were travelling, and so forth.  Ann Mieczkoski, who is Tim's assistant, one of our key marketing people, and our interoffice coordinator (all rolled into one) helped me by coordinating the letters so that they would get to Harvard on time and according to their requirements.  Ann is type of person who is generous with her time if she is helping someone, even if she has to work late, which she does regularly.  I knew she stayed even a little later because she helped me and I really appreciated it.   

Doing a portfolio was a final part of the application. It came together more easily than I originally thought due to the diversity strategy developed earlier.  I had to pick four pieces of work out of hundreds of projects that I’d done with my first consulting firm in Canada, the projects that I did as the Transportation Planner for the City of West Palm Beach, and the hundreds of projects that I’d done with Glatting Jackson and AECOM.  The four that became my portfolio were the Virginia Route 50 project, the Mississauga Downtown Master Plan, the New Jersey Route 31 project, and a seminar that I did for the National Capital Planning Commission in Washington DC.

I

Civil War Vintage Stone Wall & Scenery Along Route 50

The western part of Route 50 in Virginia is a beautiful, two-lane, rural road that winds its way through the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  It is also the main street for three quaint little towns.  The Route 50 project was about saving the agricultural, historic, and very scenic rural area from a huge highway expansion, three highway bypasses, grade-separated interchanges, and the accompanying sprawl. In the mid-1990s and right out of graduate school, when I’d studied “traffic calming”, I got a call for help from the Route 50 Corridor Coalition from rural Virginia.  It was led by a talented artist, Susan Van Wagoner; supported by a preservation group called the Piedmont Environmental Council, led by a bright, young, and committed-to-the-cause lawyer, Chris Miller; and involved a cast of characters that could populate a few novels, or a stage (see below).
 


Volunteers from the Route 50 Community Performing a
Traffic Calming Musical to Raise Awareness and
Lighten the Divisive Mood that had Gripped the Area



I ended up helping the town, rural, and business communities by encouraging them to stop arguing about which side of their towns should get destroyed by the highway bypasses and, instead, develop a vision for themselves that did not involve the large highway (a.k.a. development road) that the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) was trying to force through their area.  I also helped the community develop an alternative project (i.e., the USA’s first rural traffic calming project), based on their vision, and then led a team of designers to prepare the preliminary plans, despite the interference and strenuous objections of VDOT.  However, after several years, VDOT came around, became supportive, and eventually became our client for the project.  Now, they consider the project one of their context-sensitive design success stories.

Getting the "Bones" Right was Fundamental
to Allow a Walkable Downtown to Emerge

The Mississauga Downtown Master Plan project was about creating a transit-oriented, pedestrian-friendly, and vibrant downtown out of what was a suburban area.  My main contributions involved adding new streets to the street network, determining roles and cross-sections for the streets, developing an integrated transit strategy, planning the bicycle and pedestrian accommodations, and helping with the open space plans. 

Parks & Open Space Layer

Light Rail & Bus Rapid Transit Layer

I was also the “face” of the project and conducted the major presentations to the public and City Council.  However, every aspect of this project was a collaboration and would not have been possible without Ed McKinney who was the urban design brains behind the project.  Also, Andrew McNeil was the strategic leader, Steven Bell was the organizational genius, and a cast of other professionals at the City and on our consulting team caused this project to succeed.  As is the case in many North American cities, the most challenging group to involve holistically was the City’s transportation engineers.  I believe in my heart that they really meant well and tried hard but this experience reinforced in my mind that my own profession requires nothing less than a paradigm shift for North American cities to achieve truly integrated urban planning and design.     

Anti-Community Interchange vs Pro-Community Street Network
(Competing Visions)

The New Jersey Route 31 project started out as a short conversation between me and a client from the New Jersey Department of Transportation, a great guy and fellow engineer named Gary Toth.  Gary was giving me a ride to the airport at the time.  We were driving around a dangerous and obsolete traffic circle in a little town called, Flemington, when he mentioned that the circle was going to be replaced by a giant highway interchange.  The interchange’s construction plans had just been completed to the disappointment of the local businesses that would be economically decimated.  He added that the NJDOT also was planning to build a matching, huge, and expensive highway through the area (the right-of-way for which had been systematically assembled since the 1970s when the idea for the highway got “on the books”).

The Network that Replaced the
Destructive Highway Plan

I mentioned that the area looked like it could benefit from a smaller-scaled street network which would be lot cheaper for the NJDOT and not destroy the businesses, historic farms, wetlands, and character of area.  Instead, it would help the area (i.e. a Smart Growth Plan). That chat led to a small, low profile, contract to discuss the radical (at the time) ideas with high level NJDOT officials and a few key stakeholders.  One thing led to another and, eventually, the project turned into the largest and most influential Smart Growth project in the state, involving several agencies, several jurisdictions, several consulting firms, and a myriad of stakeholders.   

Everybody on the Stakeholder
Pyramid is Important with
Smart Growth Projects

In retrospect, one of my key roles was working with the stakeholders, inside and outside of the NJDOT, on the wisdom of shelving the 1970’s highway and interchange plans and doing something that was pro-community, less expensive, and context-sensitive.  My other role was to lead the multidisciplinary design team through a highly collaborative and public design effort which, by the way, would have been impossible without Donna Drewes.  Donna is a highly experienced community planner in New Jersey.  However, her great gift to this project was that she knew and had the respect of everyone in the area, from the community folks to the State leaders.  She was instrumental in helping us: i) figure out what we call the “Stakeholder Pyramid” (i.e., strategizing how and when to involve the people from the top to the grass-roots); and ii) successfully negotiate through the complex political minefield.

The Sparce Hierarchy with the Huge Highway (left)
Perfromed Worse than the Connected Network (right)
from Every Perspective (Cost, Historic Preservation,
Environmental Stewardship, LOS for Motorists, etc.)

Ed McKinney was also instrumental in this effort for its urban design and then leading the follow-up work.  Also, it was during the Route 31 project, when we first worked with Scott Diehl, a formidably-sized ex-soccer player who had become a talented yet conventional, skeptical yet open-minded, traffic engineer.  His firm was in a “forced marriage” with my firm, as arranged by Gary Toth, our client.  Note that Gary had a habit of pairing us up with local firms in order to train them in the ways of Smart Growth and public processes.  According to Gary, it had something to do with New Jersey learning how to fish instead of getting a fish.  Anyway, at the start, Scott was visibly uncomfortable with what was going on.  It was very unconventional and nerve-racking for him.  However, being a life-long-learner sort of person, he allowed himself to be being immersed into the project and process.  Like a sponge, he quickly picked up on the philosophies, the principles, the collateral benefits, the thoroughness and efficiencies of the public involvement process, and the potential for replication.  Scott became a kindred spirit and he expertly handled the various analyses that were needed to make the business and traffic cases complete.  New Jersey had gained a very good fisherman, just as Gary had intended.

The seminar/discussion with National Capital Planning Commission was the fourth part of my portfolio.  I had several outreach/advocacy efforts to choose from but this one was a special to me due to the optimism that I sensed during and after the event.  The discussion was an educational and awareness effort, arranged by Stewart Schwartz, the Executive Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth in Washington DC.  Stewart is an incredibly energetic and insightful advocate for saving our planet and our species.  Despite mankind’s strong, yet mostly unappreciated, trajectory towards a slow suicide, Stewart masterfully and courageously leverages all of his energies and his organization’s influence and resources to maximum effect.  Wasted opportunities are the bane of Stewart’s existence and, since he knew I would be in town for another project, he and his committed staff arranged and promoted the event.  My job was to share some ideas and insights about replacing conventional transportation values and practices with more sustainable ones and then have a discussion with the staff and friends of the Commission.  The audience was comprised of fellow practitioners, politicians, developers, property owners, advocates, staff people from several jurisdictions, and a few local residents.  The gender mix was about 50-50 and there was a wide range of experience levels.  Attendance that evening was purely voluntary.  Everyone in the room was on their own time and was engaged.  They wanted to learn the perspectives of others and they wanted to share their own.  The unanimous commitment to make a difference by such a diverse group was uplifting.

So, with my application complete, I double and triple checked the documents against the list of requirements. Everything was there.  I was done.  I was also alone at the office and New Year’s Eve was around the corner.  My colleagues were somewhere else, likely at their homes enjoying the holidays with their families.  I had missed most of the holidays; yet, my wife and children never complained, not even once.  They understood that I was working on something important.  They, like my colleagues, were all rooting for me.  Although I may have been physically alone, I felt immense support.

I was sitting in my chair.  The only things on my desk were the list of requirements, a pen, and my completed application, neatly stacked.  I pondered that stack of paper somewhat like I had pondered Sally’s e-mail three weeks earlier.  However, this time, I contemplated the future, not the past.  I imagined a committee of really smart people poring over dozens of applications from around the world and, somehow, making a connection with mine.  I imagined that stack of paper relaying my message that I had worked so hard to get right.  I imagined being selected as a Loeb Fellow and being able to “pause” for ten months and do all the things that I’d written out in my work plan.  It was a wonderful feeling.  I also imagined not being selected, feeling disappointed, but still feeling comforted because: i) I had the full backing of my family, colleagues, and firm to take a shot; and ii) I imagined that I would still fulfill a slimmed down version of the work plan, even if it was not at Harvard and even if it took longer.  Either way, I imagined a brighter future as a result of the process of completing the application and proving that I had a supportive environment.  Happily, I sealed it up, sent it off, and went home to my family to enjoy the remainder of the holidays.