"Making" Progress Teach-Out

What is “progress”? How do we decide when we’re moving forward and not taking steps backward? And how do we explore the idea of progress around public sites of memory? This Teach-Out is an invitation to think about what progress means, and how you can look for it wherever you are—in your city, community, or neighborhood—and reflect upon your own ideas about the place you live in. Changes in the built environment of our communities are themselves the result of human actions and intentions, such as municipal planning, commercial enterprises, or communities transforming their own space. In other words, in our cities we can see the results of our plans—our attempts to create and shape the future. Neighbors, political groups, corporations, governments, schools, and other organizations, they all shape the community, leaving traces that allow us to see in what directions they transformed our lives. This Teach-Out will ask the following questions: • What are the forces that shape and change the places we inhabit? • How do people connect with places in our modern cities? • Do places progress? • How can we measure in them whether there is any “progress”? We will interview a number of people who work in Atlanta, Georgia, but the questions and places we will see here are comparable to many of other places in the world on what it means to progress. In this Teach-Out you will learn how to find the history of public spaces in any community and how to reflect upon the idea of progress. Finally, you can join a conversation to discuss what has been explored, uncovered, and possibly transformed both within ourselves and our communities. A Teach-Out is: – an event – it takes place over a fixed, short period of time – an opportunity – it is open for free participation to everyone around the world – a community – it will be joined by a large number of diverse individuals – a conversation – an opportunity to give and take ideas and information from people This community lea