REFLECTION Creating this atlas was part of the first year of the MSc of Urbanism at Delft University of Technology. As a first year student in urbanism, analysing a city like Velsen and trying to visualise its narrative, was a good way to start learning how to read and understand a city. In this reflection, I will finally look back on the learning process of this first quarter. To begin, we started off with workshops and an excursion to get a first feeling for the city we were analysing. This helped to get the thought process started, and soon a first idea about what the city was, was conceived. Nevertheless, when we started looking into a different topic, the vision about the city changed again. In the process, this was something I needed to learn to accept. The analysis process is in fact not lineair but also consists of reflection and and feedback-loops. Next, as we studied different aspects of the city, we also started to need to produce different types of maps and drawings. In order to shape my thoughts and test my hypothesis, I experimented with different ways of drawing and gathering data. I found that using multiple methods helped me a lot in getting the right feeling of the city. Using sketches, reading books, looking at old photographs and filtering data in QGIS resulted in a broad feeling for the city. After analysing, the structure of the course demanded me to synthesise my ideas into presentation drawings. By doing so, I tried to draw so that my peers would understand my ideas as well. It was very helpful to see the analysis of my groupmates during these presentations. Interestingly enough, we all eventually focussed on different aspects of the city, which led to somewhat diverting conclusions. The discussions with the team and tutor Marco were really good, as it helped to stay critical towards my own thoughts. Furthermore I think it is very valuable that we started this year with a project that does not focus on design, but on understanding the story of a city. In the end, in order to create both convincing and feasible ideas and
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designs, you need to first understand the city in all of its complexity. By experimenting with methods of creating a city narrative, I think I have layed a good foundation for the design courses that are yet to come. In the atlas, I have told a story narrative that is not about the complexity of the city, but about an aspact of this complexity. On the one hand, I realise that this theme does not cover the entire truth about the city. On the other hand, I do think it is an effective way of creating clarity in a story and design. It helps to use this theme as a structure, to which I can connect different storylines of the city. Nevertheless, I should in the future not try to explain everything of socio-economic complexity through only one lense as it might result in a distorted image. In conclusion, creating a city narrative and synthesising it into an atlas and portrait has been a very good way to start learning about cities. I must say that I have felt slightly overwhelmed by the complexity of cities and their many layers and truths. Luckily, the structure offered by the course and tutoring sessions helped to guide me in the proces. At the same time, it is good to feel small and be aware of my not-knowing. This makes me eager to learn more about cities, ways to study them, methods to visualise them, and finally, how to operate as a designer in them.