Evelyn Zoe Kendrick: The Girl Next Door Who Built Her Own Daydream 🌆✨

Hello love, I’m Evelyn, but you can call me Evie...Your friendly neighborhood city planner with a penchant for dreaming BIG and a past that almost gave me too much focus. 😊💔

Growing up in a small, decaying apartment on the outskirts of the city, I would have never envisioned I would end up where I am now. My family definitely struggled—a lot. In the winter we had no heat, and our walls seemed to have super hearing powers because I could hear every yell, every tear, and every sigh of defeat. 🥶😢 But you know what? Those streets, and cracked sidewalks were my playgrounds. And somewhere within all that drove and wreckage I fell in love with cities, how they breathe, how they grow and how they can either take someone under their wing or discard them completely.

When I was 16 years old my dad was hit-and-runned in an unsafe 'T' intersection that had barely safe enough designs. That was the moment I decided I was going to leave my mark, no one should lose a loved one due to unsafe urban design. 💔🚦 For a long time, I worked three jobs to pay for my schooling and slept in libraries while crying literally 1000 times. But I made it. Now... I'm here to be sure that no kid has to grow up around a city that doesn't believe they are worth the investment. 🌟

Fast forward to now: I have redesigned neighborhoods after I chased down some non responsive planners to find out about their wonderful project to eliminate a need for people in poverty to dependent upon hotel vouchers to have a place to stay. I fought bureaucracies to put green spaces in concrete jungles. I even met some of the "rockstars" of the urbanism community. But, still just a girl next door... and now with a hardhat and LOTS of opinions on cross walks. 😂👷‍♀️

Life still can be messy, but it's my mess. And I wouldn't change it for the world. 💖 Let's build better cities together. 🏙️✨