Hi! My name is Tyler Barron, I am 31 years old, and I am originally from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I am in my second year of the Masters in City Planning program and I have been focusing my studies on active mobility, belonging, and sustainability. I have a B.S. in Sustainable Food and Farming and a B.A. in Community Collaboration and Sustainable Together-Living from UMass Amherst.

Following my undergraduate studies, I wore many different hats. During this time, I gained a deep appreciation for the value of manual labor, and had the privilege of learning from many skilled craftspeople. Some of these hats included working as a deckhand on a 5-week marine science sailing trip, as a field assistant catching and tagging river herring, as a farmer on both livestock and veggie farms, as landscaper for 2 years, and as a carpentry apprentice for 3.5 years. With the help of my carpentry colleagues, I also had the opportunity to build a small dinghy using marine plywood and fiberglass, and got support to repair, and ultimately sail, a 26’ sailboat named “Magic.” More recently, I spent a year and half working as an office manager in a non-profit architecture firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I completed a four year long, 215-pg community food system assessment for the town of Falmouth. This summer, I had the pleasure of living in the Netherlands, where I worked at the Dutch Cycling Embassy and wrote a report on the role of international cycling diplomacy. Outside of work, I have spent 3 years practicing pottery, helped to start a bulk-food buying co-op, joined the board of an agricultural non-profit, cared for multiple gardens, and played lots of soccer. I consider myself an avid cyclist, and in 2019 I biked across the country with an affordable housing organization called Bike & Build.

Personal ramblings aside, I’m interested in How to Make Almost Anything as it will allow me to build off of my past experiences of manual labor and meaningfully integrate them with my city planning studies. Although I’m excited to pursue a career as a planner, I’ve found it difficult to find a home for the skills I spent nearly a decade honing. By taking this class, I wish to forge a path for myself as a city planner who is able to get their hands dirty, address on-the-ground problems, and tinker with objects and space. I see this opportunity as a way to bridge the gap between the analog skills I’ve developed and the digital skills of mapping and data visualization that I’ve learned here at MIT. I’m interested in using this class as a platform to explore topics like maintenance, care, and beauty can be addressed through simple design, as well as quick, modudlar, and interactive interventions. With one year left in my master’s program, I’m hoping this class will help me to round out my education at MIT, strengthen my capacity to work with local communities by creating tailored solutions, and have some fun making something new.