Five Minutes with Andrew Overbeck
As he enters his 20th year as a planner with MKSK, Principal and Practice Leader Andrew Overbeck shares the themes and experiences that shape his approach to planning.
What is your approach to planning for communities and people?
Good planning starts with a sense of curiosity about a community. We have to understand the people and places to uncover the story of a plan. What are strengths and assets of this community? What makes it special? What can we build on? What are the pressing problems? Who are the change makers? We not only have to listen, we also need to know enough to ask the right questions. That allows us to tell the story of the place and its people and that’s how everyone can see themselves in the work.
How did you start your career?
In my professional life before planning, I was a researcher, writer, reporter and editor. After graduating from Earlham College I was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. This fellowship sends American college students around the world for a year to study a topic of their choosing. The only rule is you must not come back to the United States for an entire year. I spent the year in Southeast Asia researching the social, economic, and environmental impact of golf course and resort development. As part of that work, I began freelance writing for local golf magazines and for publications in the United States, including Urban Land and an international golf business trade publication. I wound up becoming editor of Golf Course News and spent five years covering the world of golf course architecture, development, and real estate. Good planning and good reporting are related to each other in the sense that you are immersing yourself in a topic or a community, learning about it, and ultimately telling a story that is clear, concise, and insightful. Along the way you are understanding problems, identifying solutions, and creating a vision for a way forward.
What is one the most lasting impressions planning has had on you?
The highest praise I have ever received was from a community member that told me after a presentation that I knew the place so well she’d swear I lived there. That is what we set out to do. We need to understand the people and places where we work. We must involve community members in co-creating the solutions and crafting a common vision. If we get these two things right, we can motivate everyone to take action and make their communities better places to live.
What drives you to plan for people?
As much as I love the big ideas that have come out of plans I have worked on, I’m just as motivated by the individual and collective actions (large and small) that a community vision can inspire. Our work leads to transformational projects and improvements, but when it results in a small business opening a storefront, or a local developer renovating a building, or a non-profit providing a needed community service, that’s when we’ve made change that everyone benefits from.
Andrew Overbeck, AICP, is a Principal and Practice Leader at MKSK. He takes a collaborative approach to developing effective plans that address complex urban challenges and identify catalytic, community-driven projects.