"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.