“Do people actually care about this? Are they curious? Yes. No. Maybe. When it comes to the fore, people have thoughts and ideas — and questions.” ~ Amber Wiley

I’ve been wanting to do a show about curiosity and community engagement in urban planning for a long time.

Then along comes Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital by Amber Wiley, a fascinating, densely-researched look at how Black Washingtonians drove urban planning and design policy for public education.

The book is, as one reviewer put it, “a stirring lesson in how the built environment records the hopes and frustrations of its society.”

What role does — or might — curiosity play in all of that?

Now as director of University of Oklahoma’s Institute for Quality Communities, Dr. Wiley has an opportunity to incorporate all that she’s learned.

Sometimes you have to sit …you have to sit and watch how a space changes over time, how people use it differently from the day, to the afternoon, to the night. Be present.

Amber and I explored award lists as a great resource for reading inspiration, institutional/ communal/ visitor curiosities as buckets for sifting and sorting community planning, peak teen moments as professional trajectories, flavors of historic preservation, our sense of history versus heritage and how we view spaces as we and they change, considerations in removing racial covenants, being present as a curiosity practice — and that we should just chat more.

Listen to Ep. #323: There Are Clues Everywhere, with Amber Wiley

Amber Wiley, PhD has over 20 years of experience in historic preservation, architecture, and community engagement. She is the Wick Cary Professor and Director of the Institute for Quality Communities at The University of Oklahoma.

Check out Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital.

Find great reading recommendations from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and the Association of American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Awards). 

Want to think more about community engagement? Try these C2BC Classics: Curiosity, Community Radio & Choosing Trust, with Katya Gordon; The Ultimate Exercise in Curiosity, with Filmmaker Antonio Villaronga; Curiosity Lessons from Solutions Journalism, with Monica Quesada Cordero; Curiosity & Community Engagement, with Dulce Carrillo.

Theme music by Sean Balick; “Home, Home At Last” by Warmbody, via Blue Dot Sessions.

You can subscribe to Choose to Be Curious on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.