Within my time in my community planning and design course, we have covered a large variety of topics. The topic that I personally found the most compelling was the idea of affordances. An affordance is an action of an object that is communicated through an object's design. An example of this that was provided in class is that a flat door automatically implies that you push the door to open it. Affordances are meant to be natural. Just as one would not attempt to pull on an entirely flat door, affordances should not need an explanation. Affordances are directly related to urban planning because while a planner is attempting to design an urban area, it is incredibly important that they reflect upon which affordances would be most useful and where to place them. Urban planners are constantly trying to find new ways to create affordances for humans in order to make our lives more simple. 

 

Many affordances are often taken for granted. Things as simple as a computer mouse have quite a few affordances. To elaborate, a mouse’s left clicker affords the user the ability to select an item while the mouse’s right clicker affords a user the ability to view the computer's options. Strangely enough, I do not ever remember being taught how to use a mouse which leads me to believe that the design of the mouse itself affords the user the ability to understand how a mouse works. Affordances are valuable because they can actually be both positive and negative depending on whom the affordance is created for. To elaborate, very large steps may be seen as a positive affordance for adults yet these steps most certainly are a negative affordance for young children and those who are handicapped. Affordances have the ability to ease someone’s life or make it more challenging. 

 

In my own personal experience, affordances have enabled me to explore an abundance of nature with relative ease. The paths and roads that are created by the Forest Service have afforded me the ability to travel and see landscapes that I would have never been able to experience if the paths had not been created. 

 

Sometimes affordances initially have one goal in mind but circumstances force planners to rethink the design. To elaborate, parks, benches, sidewalks, and bike paths all have their own value in affording citizens of Albuquerque an easier life. Albuquerque has a relatively large number of homeless people and as a result, many affordances that were once included in the city’s design have been adjusted to disallow people from utilizing affordance. An example of this occurs in alleyways where large concrete slabs normally utilized for sitting have been covered with metal pipes in order to stop people from loitering. This event occurs in civic spaces across Albuquerque, in particular around Downtown where the homeless number is greatly concentrated. This affordance was once positive in that it provided a place to rest and it has now become negative because one cannot sit there and the pipes are displeasing to the eye. 

 

In order to relate affordances to our own personal life, we spent time in class discussing how “we live in a world created by humans, for humans” (J. James). This idea, in particular, is the reason I find affordances so interesting. Another statement that was made claims that we do not offer anything to the other species around the world. Initially, I thought this could not be true and we surely must have made some type of product to ease the life of animals. We have created a small fountain bowl for our pets that are meant to act as flowing water, similar to a stream. Additionally, we have created cat litter which is similar to the dirt cats use in the wild. We have birdhouses that provide shelter and food for birds in the wild. Although all of these do benefit animals, they do not actually benefit wildlife in any way.

 

The small fountain bowls keep the water flowing which enables us to have to change the water less as it does not become stagnant. Cat litter clumps unnaturally and often are meant to disguise the smell. Additionally, bird houses provide the aesthetic appeal of wildlife without having to worry about the welfare of the bird. Each of these characteristics benefits humans. One affordance that I thought might suffice is the idea that a wildlife refuge affords an animal life of safety away from hunters but I was not very confident this fits the criteria of an affordance because we are the primary reason wildlife needs to be protected in the first place. Humans, as a whole, only take care of themselves and the animals that they keep as pets.