It's Metropolis Magazine's 25th anniversary, and in their milestone issue, Worldchanging friend and ally, Bruce Sterling, writes poetically on his year at the Art Center College of Design, where he held the befitting title of Visionary in Residence.

Sterling chronicles his observations of how normal people got transformed into designers and marvels at the hindsight he gained during his year in full immersion as a visionary and a designer of things.

Why did I make such half-assed decisions about my tools, my possessions, and my material surroundings? Why did I allow myself to do little or nothing about the gross inadequacies of my personal environment?

In the end, he expands his observations from self to city, beautifully illustrating his interactions with Pasadena and greater L.A., where design has demonstrated the capacity to turn decayed urban industrial districts into something beautiful and prescient.

This is not gentrification; there isn't anybody there to replace. This is redemption...Tomorrow's frontier is the wreckage of the unsustainable past. There is no place for us to start over clean, except through cleaning what no longer works...you'll know it's working when you see the rust bloom.

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