The arrival of fall with her gentle cool breezes, amber lighting and longer mornings is a particularly joyful (yay, Texas summer is over) and nostalgic time of year for me. It was on a cool fall morning of 2017, that my best friend and I gathered around my dining room table and booked tickets to Cork, Ireland. Just like that, my lifelong dream of international travel was coming true. With that purchase, I embarked on one of the biggest adventures of my life: touring 12 countries alone for the last six months before I turned 30.
Eight years later, not a day goes by that I don’t think of the cities I visited on that trip, most of them classic stops on your typical European jaunt: London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon with a surprising and unplanned detour to three Eastern European countries (Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia).
This trip solidified my interest in city design that had begun a few years earlier while living, studying and working in New York City. Despite now living in a less urban city, I remain endlessly fascinated by the intersection of architecture, city planning and human flourishing. Before I had children, I assumed this interest would take me all over the world, but mo...