It would perhaps make sense to call the SoPI process a pre-design process, a
series of steps through which communities may investigate how to proceed on particular development questions by learning more deeply the place in which that development is to occur; the design then being determined by what makes sense within the unique context of the place. Together, SoPI findings present not THE story of a place, but A story of a place - individual, collected pieces synthesized into an interrelated whole - a navigation instrument by which community members may chart where they are going by understanding the foundations and historic emergence of the evolving path down which they have come. A summary of the SoPI process as it played out in Albuquerque’s International District might go something like this: A question posed in conversation with thenstate senator Tim Keller - How do we “re-brand” this place? This question then expands within the course of the conversation to: How do we alter perception of this place, both within the International District and within the larger Albuquerque region? And this question begets others as a project course begins to form: How do we live into the new conception of this place as the “International District”? How do we elevate the positive attributes of this place, those that justify this new name, to the level of public consciousness? How do we write this new conception on the landscape, in the built environment? And, finally, how do we broaden the mythos - the stories we tell ourselves through which to know our place - to include stories that reflect these positive attributes?