Members' 25-Year Reminiscences

Christine M. Suarez-Murias, AICP

Antelope, California

I distinctly remember my first APA Conference in Baltimore in 1979. Although I grew up in Baltimore, I had left 10 years earlier to seek my fortune in college and life. What an eye-opener to return to my home town, which had proudly transformed itself from an "Urban Removal" victim to an international model for waterfront revitalization in one decade. (Kudos to the planners, design professionals, and economists at Wallace, McHarg, Roberts & Todd, the Rouse Company, and the private and public backers for their vision.)

At the time I had just been hired by Connecticut's Coastal Management Program and was eager to see what the mobile tour of Baltimore's coastal agricultural fringe would cover. I sat with people from all over the country, wending our way through a maze of brick row homes in Essex, while the tour guide explained the conversion of floodplain truck farms to suburbia immediately following World War II.

As the bus negotiated a tight bend in the road, the guide pointed out two remaining farmhouses, backed by a shopping center and wedged between more rowhouses. I recognized the creek separating the two farmhouses, though as a child I had never known what was around the bend in the road. I turned to the planner from Iowa sitting beside me, somewhat stunned to put it all in context, and said, "That farmhouse on the right was my grandparents' house; my mother was born in the front bedroom behind that window."

A planner is an observer — but one who helps others see the familiar with new eyes — in order to develop a clearer vision of the future. For me, planning means being able to grasp the context of a situation and shift it towards a better outcome. Over the years, I've learned the process is as important as the product. The planners I've met through APA and their commitment to continuing education and political activism have been very worthwhile. They've made my vision clearer.

On another note, how many people remember riding the Montrealer from Washington, D.C., to Montreal in 1985 for the "North American" planning conference? Planners got on at every stop along the way!